


No Rose Without a Thorn

by Repose



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hanahaki Disease, Happy Ending, M/M, Starring:, additionally featuring: taako so in denial about his feelings that he runs from them, angus as extremely perceptive communal child, cannot stress enough this will end fine, magnus and julia as also lovestruck fools but like together, raven as the overprotective elder sister, taako and kravitz as lovestruck fools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Repose/pseuds/Repose
Summary: Kravitz has loved him for a decade, now. Since they were only children.That Taako doesn't feel the same is not his fault. That sometimes Kravitz cannot breathe for the thought of him is not Taako's fault either.But it is Taako's fault for leaving.(A Taakitz hanahaki AU.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> When I found out a couple months ago what hanahaki was, I absolutely could not help myself from writing it. So, here it is: the Taakitz hanahaki au you all have been craving. Enjoy!
> 
> (Also, a note: a few of these chapters are gonna have some scenes including choking, since, y'know, hanahaki. Those chapters will come with warnings.)

“Idiots, the lot of them,” Taako snorts. Even though he and Kravitz are seated next to each other in front of a booth, both nursing margaritas (at Merle’s behest, and for his kind offer to pay for them), his legs are kicked up over Kravitz’s lap as he surveys the scene. A hearty slap from Magnus’s friend Carey rouses him, if only for just long enough to whine about how  _proud_  he is and how his little boy is all grown up now before passing out on his wife’s shoulder.

“They’re proud.” Kravitz takes a sip of his drink, a small smile creeping over his face as he pointedly does not look at Taako. “So are you, I think.”

Taako splutters. “I am not! I’m not — no, fuck that, I don’t give a shit about the kiddo.”

“That’s why you give him free lessons, then.”

Taako gives a haughty sniff, leaning back against the cushioned seat. “Money ain’t even a thing. Our old man’s fuckin’ rich or something, and ever since he so  _generously_  stole us off the streets we haven’t worried about — about, uh, funds and all that.”

“Yet you ask me to haggle down the price every single time we go shopping.”

“No, that’s different,” Taako says, kicking his legs higher on Kravitz’s lap. “That’s ‘cause the bullshit we find is all, uh, that’s fuckin’ marked up like  _hell_  and that’s just — it’s an injustice, you know? A slight against our Lady Liberty with her, fuckin’, torch and everything. You shouldn’t have to kick out a hundred dollars for a pair of boots, right? Unless they’ve touched, I dunno, the gross and smelly feet of Billy Armstrong or something.”

“But if money isn’t a concern for you, you could haggle it down yourself. What are the repercussions of another fifty dollars? It’s a good learning experience!”

“‘Cause I don’t wanna ask the old geezer for fifty extra bucks,” Taako sniffs, then brandishes his drink at Kravitz. “‘Sides, when am I ever gonna go shopping  _not_  with you? Lup and Barry go to the, fuckin’, Gap to get their clothes, and Magnus and Jules wouldn’t know a department store if it hit ‘em over their head and let’s be honest here, where is Merle gonna find his floral shirts in the middle of a Macy’s? He isn’t, that’s where.”

“You’re taking advantage of my silver tongue,” Kravitz grins.

“I — okay, yes.” Taako takes a long swig of his drink. “Maybe a little.”

“Maybe next time I should let you go on your own,” Kravitz teases. “See how you like trying to stack up against a Nordstrom’s representative in their ugly uniforms.”

“Absolutely not, I refuse to be seen in public shopping at  _Nordstroms_ without  _someone_  in at least a suit. Besides, their employees need to shape up and work somewhere else, because bright orange? Really? I wanna know what chump thought a bright orange uniform was a good idea and punch them in the face. Directly in the nose.”

“You know, you could wear the suit. I think you’d look good in one.”

“Fuck off.”

“No, really!”

Taako glares at him. “Perish the thought, bone boy, the day you catch Taako in something as boring as a suit is the day Lup’s finally snapped and burned my Maxi collection, which is to say the day both of us just beef it.”

“Oh, so you think my fashion taste is boring?” Kravitz gripes, faux-wounded, hand over his heart and everything. “Gosh, how could I ever recover from such a grievous insult?”

“Gosh,” Taako snorts. “I can’t believe you say shit like — like  _gosh_ and  _goodness_.”

Kravitz shrugs, dropping the wounded front in favor of a grin. “It’s better than my accents, at least.”

Taako chokes on his drink, waving his hand in the air. “Do not even  _speak_  of those,” he says, laughing. “Those were awful, you were, what,  _twelve?_  Thinkin’ you could do an Australian accent!”

“Hey, my accents weren’t too bad! My Cockney was pretty good.”

“Your Cockney was the absolute worst of the lot,” Taako groans, as Kravitz knew he would. “We were in — fuckin’, middle school, and you were walkin’ around in a tiny tailored suit like  _pip pip cheerio_  in the most  _abominable_  accent. You’re — you know, you’re real lucky I decided to hang out with you, Kravitz. Got you back on the straight and narrow.”

Kravitz hums. “I think you butchered that first part, my man,” he says, dipping back into his fake accent.

Taako cuffs his ear. “One, that was an awful joke and you should be ashamed. Two, I refuse to be seen with you in public doing accents, I refuse. You do that again and I’m  _leaving_ , Taako is  _out_.”

“Oh, are you really?” Kravitz drawls. “Now I think it’d be rather rude for you to just  _dip_  on me like that, dearest. Who do you expect to cover your drink?”

“ _Dearest_ ,” Taako mimics, rolling his eyes behind his glass. “You’re disgusting.”

“And yet here you are,” Kravitz says, “ten years later.”

“It’s for the bargains. I wouldn’t get those discounts if I didn’t drag you with me.”

“I’m being used for my financial prowess,” Kravitz says mournfully. “You wound me, Taako Taaco. And here I was, thinking we were friends.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Taako slumps down farther in his seat, heels kicking against Kravitz’s thighs. “I thought we were too, and then you got on stage for, fuckin’ — who were you, Grant-someone-or-other, way back in middle school, and you did that  _awful_  accent, who was that?”

“Graintaire,” Kravitz supplies. He’d done an awful French accent. So bad that Taako threatened to Sharpie a mustache on his face and Lup had actually done it. “Les Miserables, Taako. We’ve only seen that movie about a hundred times.”

“It’s just jabber-jabber-revolution-thrust-die,” Taako says. “And that one guy spitting up petals, like, come on. The last time we watched I counted the number — the number of times they, uh, compared his little rose petals to the color of blood, and you know what I got?”

Thirty-seven, Kravitz thinks, right before Taako reports the same number. “Which is to say just, too many.”

“It was a sad scene, Taako.”

“Oh, sure, if you’re a hopeless romantic,” Taako snorts.

“You cried the first time we watched it.”

“I was fourteen!”

“And bawling like a child half your age,” Kravitz grins.

Taako takes a sip. “That was back when I thought something like he had could ever happen to me.”

Though Kravitz is used to his seemingly-random bursts of crippling honesty, this one still takes him off-guard. He knows better than to dig deeper, he knows better than to appear pitying, or react at all, really; but he can’t help himself from asking, “You don’t think you’ll find love eventually?”

“Yeah, perish the thought, I know,” Taako says, averting his gaze. He elbows Kravitz in the shoulder. “‘Specially for you, you, like — bleed romance novels and whatever. Trashy dime-a-dozen novels, I can’t believe you.”

“They were a dime back in the nineteenth century, Taako, they’re hardly so cheap now.”

“Which just means they’re an actual — an actual investment, which also means you should be ashamed. But um, Lup — she found Barry, and Mags has Jules, and once Merle wrapped up the whole thing with Dav’s dandelions they, uh…they put a ring on that and everything, and I figure there’s only so much love in the universe, y’know?” Taako takes a steady sip of his drink. His hands don’t even shake. Kravitz envies him, for a moment; that his hands don’t tremble, and don’t give him away.

Kravitz folds his own carefully beneath the table. “And even if that means ol’ Taako doesn’t get his slice of the apple pie, or cherry, or whatever flavor that pie is, then that’s fine by me. There are people who, uh, deserve it more, so.” Another sip. “I’m glad the universe is investing, fuckin’, flour and yeast and apple preserves or whatever in them.”

“I think you deserve it,” Kravitz says. He wants to reach for Taako’s hand, wants to fold those slim, cooking-calloused fingers in his own. He does not. “I don’t think there’s a finite amount of love, Taako. I think everyone loves and is loved in turn, and the lucky ones — well, for the lucky ones, it goes both ways.”

Taako watches him for a long, long time. Panic mounts in his throat — did he give himself away? Did he say too much? He’s at the point of spilling red wine all over his pants and that would be inconvenient, he just pressed these slacks yesterday, until Taako looks away. “Figures,” he snorts derisively. “You want a happy ending for everyone.”

“To the birthday boy!” Julia roars, so loudly that the whole bar turns and looks at her.

“It’s not my birthday, ma’am,” Angus says politely from his seat between her and her husband. At some point, when Kravitz wasn’t watching, he’d wedged himself between his adoptive parents. “I’m graduating tomorrow.”

“To the graduating birthday boy!”Julia says, equally as enthusiastic, and Angus rolls his eyes at the same time Kravitz does, because she knows it’s not Angus’s birthday but, at the point before weepy-drunkenness, this is her sense of humor. To both of their chagrin.

“To Angus,” Kravitz grins.

“To my magic boy,” Taako says, the picture of disgruntled complacency, and clicks his glass to Kravitz’s.

“So I am your magic boy!” a voice pipes from beneath their table. Or at least, Kravitz thinks it’s beneath their table until he looks over and catches two eyes peeping up at them. “You’re a dirty liar, sir!”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You certainly did!”

“Nothing you can prove in court, bubbeleh,” Taako says, and ruffles Angus’s hair. “You trip on the stage and I’m disowning you.”

“You’re not my legal guardian, sir. There’s nothing for you to disown.”

Taako places a hand on his chest. “As your uncle I am  _deeply_ wounded.”

“You’re full of horseshit, sir. Hello, Mr. Kravitz.”

“Hello, Angus,” Kravitz says. “Enjoying the celebration?”

“Very much so! Except I know it’s not a celebration because this is a bar and bars are for people over 21 years old, which I am not. Also I found the receipt for my cake in the trash can because Magnus forgot to take it out so I know there’s a real party for little boys tomorrow. Probably at your house.” Angus hops up on the seat next to him and peers at his drink. “Merle’s paying for those, isn’t he?”

“You’re an awful little boy, Agnes.”

“I learned from the best, sir.”

“Do at least act surprised,” Kravitz asks. “Magnus and Julia are very excited. They tell us you’ve never had a surprise birthday party before.”

“I think here is where I should say that that’s only because I’m too smart for people to pull surprises on me, but we both know that’s not true.” Kravitz’s heart twinges sympathetically — Angus’s grandfather could kindly be called  _distant_ , and the orphanage was understaffed at the best of times. “Anyway, I’m really looking forward to it! I think Julia is getting me a recording device that I can wear in my ear for whenever I need to be a sneaky little boy, and I’m pretty sure Magnus is getting me a duck.”

“Who knows, bubbeleh, this could be the year he gets you something else.”

“Oh no, it’s fine, I love them. I’ll add it to my collection. He gave my last one a little spyglass to look like me.” Angus pats Kravitz’s shoulder and hops down from the bench. “I’ll see you both tomorrow, I think. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Mr. Kravitz!”

“What about me?” Taako calls after Angus’s retreating back, then slumps back on the bench, looking distinctly miffed. Kravitz doesn’t bother muffling his chuckles in his sleeve.

“You’ve been thoroughly outwitted by a twelve year old boy.”

“You mean  _we_  have,” Taako snarks. “Joint planning effort, my dude.”

“You just sniped at Magnus and Jules until they let you cater.”

“I will not have my magic boy eating  _third-rate_ catering for his graduation party,” Taako sniffs. “That’s a disgrace to the Taako name.”

“They’re professionals, Taako. You’re not out of culinary school yet.”

“Yet I could cook any one of their asses under the table.”

Kravitz laughs, then clears his throat as it begins to itch. “I’m still waiting to see you cook off with Gordon Ramsay, you know.”

“Oh?” Taako cocks an eyebrow at him. “Who would your money be on, then?”

“If I didn’t care about winning? You.”

Taako yelps indignantly at him, sending him into further fits of laughter that break into coughs. The coughs don’t stop, and don’t stop, and his throat begins to prickle, tracing a line of embers up his throat.

He stumbles out from the table, waving off Taako’s worried inquiries, and hurries to the bathroom, one hand stuffed over his mouth. Gods, these fits always pick the  _least_  convenient times — thankfully he’s not often  _with_  Taako for one of these, but when he is, he always has to think on his feet to explain why he’s taking off in such a hurry. He’d never appreciated improv classes more than that moment in junior year when he’d sprinted out of a chemistry test to retch petals into his palm.

He locks himself in a stall and doubles over, stomach cramping. His frame shakes with coughs, as he struggles to tear a path through the bristling flowers rooted in his windpipe.

A lull, a thin opening and he slumps against the wall of the stall, spent. He tries to swallow and convulses, retching.

“Kravitz?”

Kravitz tries to warn him away and and regrets it immediately, on his knees as petals spill from his mouth, tickling along the top of his mouth and cutting at his lips. He clamps both hands over his mouth, trying to muffle the sound of his own choking and failing. He’s shaking already, and distantly fear grips him; it’s never been this bad before, he can count the petals in the dozens when in the beginning there was only one, a single fluttering petal he could catch in his hand before anyone saw, but  _this_ —

Footsteps approach his stall. “Krav, you okay?”

Panic lurches sharp in his stomach. “Fine — ” he gasps, fighting for air. “‘m fine — pneumonia — ”

“Again?” Taako asks, a touch of sympathy in his voice. Ten years ago Kravitz wouldn’t have recognized it but he does now, the sympathetic pain in his voice. He’d thought Taako unfeeling, back in junior high. “Jeez, Krav, your immune system’s really fucking you over, it’s been, what, three years now?”

“Just about,” he says, words catching painfully in his throat.

“Need anything?”

“Water,” he rasps, because he will, soon.

“Okay. Be right back.”

The door opens, and shuts, and Kravitz inhales carefully. When the petals stay stagnant, no tickling itch in his windpipe, he sits back against the stall, eyes fluttering closed. He needs to gather this up, all the petals, in the pocket he sewed just for this, but first he just — he needs a moment. His head is spinning and his heartbeat is pounding in his ears, but he narrows his focus to the slow drag of breath in his throat — in and out, in and out, a tempo of his own making, unravelled by his own heart.

He scrubs his mouth with the back of one shaking hand, sighs when it comes away streaked thinly with blood. He’s too drained for proper swearing.

Kravitz gathers the petals as best he can, careful not to miss any — doubtless the bar wouldn’t appreciate stumbling upon an explosion of petals — and tucks them in the inside pocket of his jacket just as the bathroom door opens again.

“Still in here?”

“Yeah,” Kravitz says and, patting his pocket to ensure the petals are securely out of sight, steps from the stall.

“You look like hell,” Taako says, and hands him a cup of water. “Shouldn’t you be, I dunno, takin’ meds for that or something?”

“Already am.” Kravitz knocks it all back in one go, eyes slipping shut at the relief in his throat. “Thanks.”

Taako takes the cup back, looking not quite at Kravitz’s eyes but down, at his lips. Kravitz has dreamed about this, granted, but under much different circumstances. “You’re shaking,” he says.

“Vomiting blood isn’t easy, you know,” Kravitz grins wryly. He tries to take a step forward and sways, head spinning. He braces himself on the sink. “Sorry, just give me a second — ”

“Here.” Taako slips an arm beneath his shoulder and tugs Kravitz close to him. “And don’t apologize for that, you idiot.”

The two of them slide back into their seats, their margaritas untouched where they were sitting. Kravitz sinks back into the cushions gratefully, letting his head fall back against the seat.

For a few moments there’s blissful silence. When Kravitz opens his eyes again he sees Taako watching him, a near-invisible note of concern in his gaze.

“Taako, I’m fine.”

Taako snorts, and the tension between them snaps. “Like hell you are.” He slides Kravitz’s drink closer to him. “You wanna go home?”

“No,” Kravitz says truthfully. “I can manage at least another hour, I think.”

Taako studies him for a beat, then shakes his head. “Lightweight. You always did knock out early.”

“Did not!”

“You absolutely did too, my man, do not give me that horseshit. You went to bed every night at eleven in freshman year.”

Kravitz pouts. “I was a freshman.”

“Yeah, but you were still  _you_ ,” Taako says, and prods his chest. “Nerd.”

Maybe in a different world he’d take Taako’s hand, kiss the back of it. It’d make Taako laugh and splutter and turn him red all the way up to the tips of his ears.

Instead, here, in this world, Kravitz lets Taako’s finger fall from his chest — right above his heartbeat — without a word. And instead of a hundred other things, a  _would you like to get dinner with me tomorrow?_  or  _what time will you be home?_  or simply, _I love you_ , Kravitz smiles and says, “Guilty as charged.”

They pass the next hour easily. It’s so easy to talk to Taako, and always has been, for Kravitz. The right questions and sympathy are rewarded with startlingly honest answers. Small things, like how his aunt’s roast turkey takes five hours to prepare and he’d made it for Lup, the day before her wedding, and complained to Kravitz the whole time because there was nothing for him to but sit and turn the roast; but big things too, like how neither Taako nor Lup can sleep in the dark, how they always curl back-to-back while napping, like how his gap teeth shine when he smiles and despite appearances he would do anything for the small family he’s crafted right in the heart of the city.

A few minutes before one he calls an Uber, and Taako walks him out into the brisk autumn evening. Taako’s face is the last he sees as he pulls away from the bar.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kravitz goes shopping. Taako makes a discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Taako's defense, he's got commitment issues like whoa. Also, homosexual Westerns remains one of my favorite japes in this fic.

“How do you not have cumin?”

“I’m a bachelor, Taako!”

“That’s not an excuse to keep a pathetic pantry!”

“Pathetic — ” Kravitz sputters, but Taako raps his knuckles with a wooden spoon and points the butt toward the door, not bothering to look over the bowl of spices he’s crafting.

“You. Cumin.”

“It’s cold outside.”

Taako snorts. “You’re a big boy, and also freezing eighty percent of the time. It’ll hardly register.” He uncaps the cinnamon, sprinkles in a liberal dose. “Besides, the corner store is a two-minute walk. Make yourself useful.”

Grinning, Kravitz obliges, shrugs on a coat and a scarf and his boots and complains the whole way out the door. He shuts it behind him with a parting jab about how he’s going to get hypothermia and  _die_ and Taako’s resulting snort.

It is indeed a six-minute excursion to buy cumin. When he returns, purchased goods in hand, he passes them to Taako, the top of Taako’s braid brushing beneath his chin. He’s a good head taller than Taako and always thought that, if he were to kiss him, his hands would nestle perfectly in the small of Taako’s back.

“I realize, in retrospect, that sending someone out to get ingredients when they’ve got, uh, pneumonia, is — that’s probably a bad look.”

Kravitz blinks, then waves an airy hand through the air. “Like you said. I’m a big boy.”

“Yeah,” Taako says, as close to an apology as Kravitz is going to get. “Like I said. Hey, preheat the oven, will you? 350.”

Kravitz obliges. “Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

He laughs as Taako swats at him with the spoon again, dancing out of Taako’s reach with his tongue stuck out. “Disgusting,” Taako mutters, and sticks out his tongue to match.

Kravitz settles himself in his armchair, flipping idly through an old tome while Taako cooks. It’s a pleasant backdrop while he absorbs this new story (and  _yes_ , it’s one of those trashy romance novels that Taako hates but Kravitz refuses to abandon), the sizzling and splashing and decadent aroma wafting through their apartment.

Finally Taako clanks whatever he’s prepared into the oven — Kravitz isn’t even totally sure  _what_ , exactly, Taako is making, except that his kitchen smells faintly of garlic and he’d tugged two breasts of chicken out of Kravitz’s freezer, jabbing him on how he couldn’t even freeze chicken right, because he’d stored them too close to the icebox — and slumps onto the sofa with a huff.

That’s Taako’s corner of the sofa, or at least Kravitz thinks of it that way; it’s where he always sits, and in his more fanciful moments Kravitz can make out a Taako-shaped dip in the mattress. As is his custom Taako gathers all the pillows and blankets within reach and shuffles them over his lap, laying his head dramatically on the armrest.

“Hey, uh, your sister back this weekend?’

“Yeah.” Kravitz sets his book aside. Taako and Raven got along fine in the beginning, but since — well, since Kravitz’s affliction, she’s turned colder toward him. He jokes that she hates anyone who isn’t goth, and Taako ribs him about adoring Gerard Way and the t-shirts emblazoned with Amy Lee’s face still hanging in his closet, and they don’t talk about it. “Just in time for the party.”

“Natch.” Taako sprawls along the couch cushions, head resting on one crooked elbow. His hair spills in a golden weave over the threads of Kravitz’s couch and for one impulsive moment Kravitz wants to reach out, thread his fingers through that hair, find out how soft it really is.

“She saved my life, you know,” Kravitz says.

“Huh?”

“Raven. When we were kids.” He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t truly thought it out, but Kravitz hates that his sister and Taako don’t get along. That they don’t get along because of him. Out of everyone in their little family, Taako and Raven’s icy relationship is surpassed only by his and Lucretia’s. “I used to love swimming.”

“I could deffo get behind you in Spandex.”

Kravitz’s heart clenches. “I was eleven, Taako.”

Taako rolls over, quirks an eyebrow at him upside-down. “When’s the last time you went swimming, Krav?”

“Thirteen years ago.”

There’s a pause as Taako does the math. His eyes widen briefly, before narrowing again. Kravitz clears his throat. “I jumped in the river because there was something shiny at the bottom. And I was pretty good at swimming — this was back when I was a kid, and Raven was just a teenager, she took me to the river sometimes because she knew I loved it.” Kravitz drums his fingers against his thigh. “There was a current beneath the river. I almost drowned, but Raven — she pulled me out.”

Taako studies him. “Touching,” he says dryly. “Why are you telling me this?”

“It’s been ten years,” Kravitz says. “There’s little you don’t know about me already.” Kravitz stills his anxious hands. “Also I know you don’t like my sister and I hate it.”

“Shit, me too.” Taako looks toward the ceiling and crosses his legs. “We got along just fine until junior year, then she got all weird.”

Kravitz bites his lip. “Yeah, I know.”

There’s silence for a beat, then Taako rolls his head toward Kravitz and sits up. “Kravitz,” he says dangerously.

“What?”

“Give me that.”

He’s looking at Kravitz’s book. He snatches it up and holds it to his chest. “No.”

“Do not make me come over there and get it, Kravitz.”

“You’re gonna make fun of it!”

“Oh you know I am,” Taako says, hefting himself to his feet. He perches on one arm of the sofa and stares Kravitz down. “Hand it over, I just wanna read the back.”

Kravitz holds it tighter to his chest. “Don’t you have cooking to be doing?”

Taako snatches for it, but Kravitz twists out of the way. “It’s in the oven, bubbeleh, it’s not my problem for at least another fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to do some investigating.” He shuffles onto Kravitz’s lap and grabs again, but Kravitz holds the book tighter.

“This is awfully rude, Taako.”

Taako grins a sharp shark’s grin. “That’s me,” he says, pleased, and digs his fingers into Kravitz’s sides. “Rude and uncivilized.”

Kravitz lets out an  _extremely_  undignified squeak. “Oh come on — !” Kravitz snickers, trying to squirm away from Taako’s fingers and failing. “This isn’t fair, we aren’t fifteen — ha — oh come on, this isn’t  _fair_  — ”

He breaks away to snort, curling in on himself in a last-ditch defensive attempt. “Oh no you don’t,” Taako says, and even though Kravitz is currently occupied resisting the urge to throw Taako off his lap (he could and they both know it — Taako never was athletic, ‘too much effort’), he can hear the smile in Taako’s voice. “C’mon, Bones, I just wanna read it — ”

“You’re gonna make fun of me!”

“Perish the thought,” Taako says, and finds a sensitive spot along Kravitz’s sides and digs his fingers in. Kravitz rears backward, trying to wriggle away, but Taako snatches the book from his hands.

Kravitz laughs breathlessly, recomposing himself. The air brushes along the petals in his throat and he coughs once, twice, before clearing his throat and declaring, “I hate you.”

“You could never,” Taako says smugly, still perched atop Kravitz’s knees.

“I hate that my tickle spots are the same after ten years,” Kravitz grumbles, burying his face in Taako’s chest. “I’m an adult now, those shouldn’t still work!”

“Not how biology works, homeslice,” Taako says absently, pinching Kravitz’s nose with the hand not occupied holding the back cover in front of his face. Kravitz shakes his head to dislodge Taako’s fingers, smacks Taako’s hand away. “Oh my god, Kravitz.”

Kravitz groans, low and defeated.

“This is awful. This is awful, how do you — a horse? Why is this — is this a gay cowboy story?” Taako tucks two fingers beneath his chin and tugs his face up, brandishing the book at him with the other. “Are you reading a — a fuckin’  _homosexual Western?_ ”

“It’s a good genre,” Kravitz defends, blushing furiously. He snatches for the book, but Taako dances out of the way. He’s always been faster than Kravitz. “I don’t need you critiquing my taste in literature.”

“Listen — okay, no, first of all, you definitely do, because this is unacceptable and second,  _literature_? This cannot be called literature, Kravitz! Literature has the word “lit” in and therefore by default cannot be applied to  _anything_  you read!”

“I’ve read the draft of your cookbook.”

Taako freezes, then hits him lightly in the chest with his own book. “Take your trash back,” he sulks. “Can’t sully my hands with it anymore.”

“You know I’m right, Taako!”

“I will confess to no such thing.”

“You don’t need to,” Kravitz sing-songs, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on Taako’s knees. “I already know everything I need to.”

Taako stares him dead in the eyes, then pokes his nose. “False. I — I don’t have anything better than false, and also fuck you.”

Kravitz goes to lick his finger and Taako yanks it back, retching. “You’re disgusting!”

“Learned it from Lup,” Kravitz shrugs, grinning unabashedly up at him. “Your sister, your fault.”

“No, that’s not even — you are so far off,” Taako says, disentangling himself from Kravitz’s lap and going to check on the kitchen. “By that logic that means you also gotta blame me for trying to set you up with Barold during freshman year and I want  _no_  part of that.”

“I think that worked out for Lup in the end, though,” Kravitz says, standing and stretching. “Chicken done?”

“Almost,” Taako says, putting the oven mitts back. It’d taken Kravitz four years to drill organization into Taako’s head — in this flat everything has a place and will be returned there, thank you. “Five minutes or so.”

“How long until people arrive?”

“You have a clock on your wrist.”

Kravitz sprawls out over the couch and grins cheekily at him. “Too far away.”

“You’re awful,” Taako says, rolling his eyes where Kravitz can see him. “We’ve got half an hour.”

“Cool.” He sits back, studies the ceiling, then picks his head up again. “Hey, could you grab Angus’s present? It’s in my closet.”

“Are you trying to put me back in the closet?”

“And you say  _my_  gay jokes are awful.”

Taako pauses, considering. “Okay, yeah, that one was pretty bad. What will you give me in return?”

Kravitz shrugs. “My undying love and affection?”

Taako snorts. “Disgusting,” he says, but tromps obligingly into Kravitz’s room. “Your room’s a mess!”

“Is not!”

“Your bed isn’t made, and there’s dust on the windowsill!”

Kravitz rolls his eyes. “I’m sorry I don’t  _dust my bedroom_  often enough for your tastes!”

He hears a muttered “you should be,” then silence. Kravitz closes his eyes, the delicious scent of garlic and rosemary wafting around the kitchen, and waits for Taako’s returning footsteps.

They return, far slower than they should. Kravitz sits up, and when he looks toward the entryway, Taako is carrying a jar of rose petals.

Ice chills in Kravitz’s veins.

“Taako?”

Taako doesn’t say anything as he crosses the room. Kravitz stiffens, scoots over to make room, and Taako sits, face eerily blank. This time, Taako doesn’t bother with his nest of blankets.

“What are these?”

“Petals,” Kravitz says, and in an attempt at lightheartedness says “I’d have thought you’d know that, Taako, your father is a gardener — ”

“Kravitz.”

Kravitz’s heart plummets to his stomach. Taako looks at him and Kravitz can’t hold his gaze, so he looks away, looks to the table still scuffed with bootprints from Taako’s uncaring kicked-up legs.

“Why do you keep them?”

His voice is perfectly even. Taako’s voice is never even. “I like them,” he shrugs. “I know that sounds, uh, fucked up, but — they remind me what I’m — ” He swallows, cuts himself off. “Are you angry?”

Taako ignores his last question. “Yeah, that’s pretty fucked up,” he says. He sets the jar on the table, lips pressed firmly together, eyes still shadowed with something Kravitz can’t quite understand. “You know, I don’t think I’ll ever understand you, Kravitz.”

“Taako, you still  _know_ me.”

“He’s a lucky guy.” This time, he’s the one who won’t meet Kravitz’s gaze. “Whoever he is.”

Kravitz blinks. “Taako, it isn’t — it isn’t some guy, it’s — ”

“Don’t.”

“Taako— ”

Taako’s voice is harsh with warning. “ _Don’t_ , Kravitz.”

Taako sits up, shoulders tense and gaze fixed rigid on the unlit fireplace in the wall. His jaw is locked tight and Kravitz feels like he can’t breathe and for once, it isn’t the damned garden coating his windpipe.

“Okay,” Kravitz says softly. “Okay, I won’t. Are you all right?”

Taako barks out a laugh, hands fisting in his jeans. “You’re incredible, you know that?”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment.

“I’ve been told,” Kravitz murmurs. He looks toward the fireplace as well. “The chicken’s probably done.”

Taako blinks. “Right,” he says, and stands. “Right. Yeah, it probably is.”

He stands. Kravitz hears the oven door open, shut, metal clanking against metal. There’s a beep of an interior thermometer; a pause, then the rhythmic sound of chopping.

Kravitz’s chest is tight now, too, something uncomfortably heavy pressing on his sternum. This is why he hadn’t said anything. He  _knew_  this was going to happen, knew that when Taako found out he would get scared, and he would leave.

Kravitz wants to run, badly. Wants to flee his own flat, take refuge with Hurley and Sloane. Maybe call Julia and see if her dining room table has room for one more, if she’s got tea steeping.

But too many people have left Taako already and if Kravitz leaves now he’ll smash the last of the wooden slats he hasn’t already burned. Instead he forces himself to stand, walk over to his own counter. He — he needs Taako to know this, at least.

“This isn’t your fault, Taako.”

His back is turned toward Kravitz and it stiffens at the words. There’s a pause in the rhythm of his chopping and it lulls, just for a moment; then Taako says, with a voice so unaffected Kravitz startles to hear it, “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, my man.”

His heart drops. “Ah,” Kravitz says. In the end, he tells himself, it’s better than it could be — he could have lost Taako entirely. He can keep pretending nothing’s wrong. He — he wouldn’t mind.

Inside his throat, the roses bloom, stretching their petals a bit farther. The prickling feeling of seeds taking root trickles farther up his windpipe and he fights the urge to retch, balling a fist against his mouth and blinking back involuntary tears.

“I think Lup bought Ango trick candles,” Taako says after a while. He slides the diced carrots off the chopping board, drops them in the bowl with a brisk flick of his wrist. “I don’t even think — don’t think she needs them, to be honest. She could just relight ‘em as soon as they go out.”

“He’d realize though,” Kravitz says carefully. “He’s very intelligent.”

“He’ll figure out they’re trick candles pretty fast too,” Taako says sharply. “But yeah. Don’t freak when they keep burning.”

“I won’t.”

Taako hums absently. His back is still turned. He pulls three full tomatoes out of his bag and sets about slicing those. “How long do we have?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Cool cool.”

“Do you need help?”

Taako snorts. “Not from you, my man.”

Kravitz bites his lip. He doesn’t know what to say, and that’s what gets him more than anything else — he doesn’t know what to do. He’s never had to dance around Taako. The sort of easy honesty that grew between them was present from the very start, and Kravitz has uprooted it. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know how to smooth things out into the easy camaraderie of before.

“Still got Magnus’s ducks?”

“Yeah,” Kravitz says. “Those were in the closet, too. Did you — did you grab Angus’s — ”

“Nah, got a little sidetracked.” Taako brushes a lock of hair out of his face with one shoulder. “Just be warned, I think he’s bringing some more. Takes every chance he can get to, uh, fuckin’ frisbee them at people he knows.”

“I’ll clear more space then,” Kravitz says, and leaves.

He means to grab the present and head back to the kitchen, he really does; but alone, the full weight of Taako’s stubborn denial weighs on him and he sinks to his knees on the patchwork carpet of his closet. He fights to keep his breathing even, he can’t afford to cry because then he’ll start coughing, and that —

He retches. One hand flies to his mouth and the other scrambles for the closet door, pulling it shut. The light spilling in from his bedroom ceases, leaving him in the dark, and Kravitz struggles to keep his coughs as quiet as possible.

It’s different now, this — the petals he’s coughing up seem larger, fuller somehow, and Kravitz’s eyes sting. Gods, he doesn’t want to deal with anyone right now, doesn’t want to deal with Taako. He hopes he’s not audible from the kitchen.

After several minutes the fit passes and Kravitz, now able to breathe easier, slumps back against the wall. He stares into the darkness, the faint halo of light around his door, and buries his head in his hands. Crying is out of the question, he’s too drained — he couldn’t muster tears even if he wanted them — so he dashes a hand across his eyes, his lips, reaching shakily for the water bottle Raven keeps tucked in the back corner. He unscrews it, hands still trembling, and takes a large drink to calm himself.

Kravitz counts thirty seconds, slumped against the wall, hands shaking where he’s folded them in his lap, eyes closed despite the darkness around him. Then he shuts the water bottle, replaces it, and opens the closet door, present in hand.

Scattered around him are full roses’ heads.

Kravitz doesn’t breathe, for several moments. Nothing blocking his windpipe; just shock.

It can get worse, he knows. Progress from petals to full flowers, when love is unrequited. This is what most experts call the point of no return; he probably couldn’t get surgery now, even if he wanted.

His only thought is how upset Raven will be. He hates when she worries.

He kneels, touches the head of one gently. There are at least ten, a dozen petals on each head, and scattered around him are no less than six. He thinks,  _I’m going to need a larger jar_.

For now the smaller ones will have to do. He uncaps one — he and Raven keep them on the top shelf — and shovels them in, careful to leave their heads undamaged. He looks to the windowsill where he kept his jars, looks toward the kitchen where he can hear Taako still chopping, rhythm undaunted, then places this new jar on the sill.

“Find it?” Taako asks, when Kravitz reenters the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Kravitz rasps. One of Taako’s ears flick back toward him, though he himself does not move. Kravitz clears his throat and tries again, voice far more pleasantly full this time.

Five minutes pass in silence before the doorbell rings. Just before Kravitz opens it he hears Taako take a deep breath and glances over to find him arched over his cutting board, knuckles white around the knife.

Kravitz opens the door, a bright smile already in place.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako finds out just how much damage he's done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy thanksgiving! Welcome to the point where everything goes to shit

The trick candles don’t fool Angus one bit. He blows them out once, twice, then fixes Taako with an unyielding stare. “This is a rude goof, sir,” he says. “Birthdays are supposed to be goof-free days.”

Taako shrugs easily. “Isn’t your birthday, bubbeleh. ‘s your graduation.”

“On my birthday you told me that my graduation party would be a goof-free day.”

“Ah, but your celebration was yesterday, kiddo.”

“You didn’t really see me yesterday!”

“Exactly.” Taako ruffles Angus’s hair, grinning at him. “No goofs at all from Taako.”

Cake is cut and served. Aside from a tension in his shoulders that won’t go away, Taako seems entirely unbothered by his discovery earlier that day. For a brief, wild moment, Kravitz wonders if he actually  _doesn’t_ know that Kravitz loves him, before dismissing the thought impatiently. Taako is equal parts intelligent and impatient; if he didn’t know, he would ask.

Despite the nausea still roiling in his gut, Kravitz manages to relax during the celebration. As Taako predicted, Magnus does gift him with yet another duck. Not just him, either, but every single attendant of the party. Angus’s has a deerstalker, this year. Taako’s has a floppy wizard’s hat and Kravitz’s, a scythe. There’s a little skull on the non-bladed end. It’s cute.

They sing happy birthday three times, and happy graduation once, and Julia conducts all four of those songs. Kravitz excuses himself from joining them, because he can’t, anymore, but he watches with a small fond smile and ignores the strange look Taako gives him when he notices Kravitz doesn’t sing.

There are age-appropriate board games and Charades and three separate games of Clue, two of which Angus wins and one of which Merle wins, somehow, on the very first round. (He claims he wasn’t cheating. Magnus doesn’t believe him, and Barry doesn’t either, but neither of them can work out how he did it. Davenport only smiles.)

Eventually the party winds down, its attendants trickling out one by one. Angus stays with Magnus and Julia until the very end, and gives both Kravitz and Taako big hugs before departing, and if the hug Angus gives him is longer than usual, well, Kravitz doesn’t want to read too far into that.

He half-expects Taako will leave with Magnus, but he doesn’t. Instead, after closing the door behind them, he invites himself into their living room and puts on a Ghibli movie and sits himself on the couch. After a few moments, during which Kravitz should really be cleaning up from the party and not just staring, Taako looks up.

“Well?” he says impatiently.

He’ll do the cleaning in the morning, he decides, and needs no further invitation to join Taako on the couch. At first he sits a cushion apart, not really knowing what to  _do_ , even though normally they’ll curl up together or Taako would dunk his head in Kravitz’s lap and demand to have his hair played with but that feels different, now, and Kravitz doesn’t know where the line is.

Except then, Taako scoffs and hits play and pulls Kravitz close to him, shoulders bumped together. He doesn’t — he doesn’t tuck his head beneath Kravitz’s jaw, doesn’t sling a leg over Kravitz’s knees, like he used to, but he does press their sides together and that’s good enough for Kravitz.

Maybe — maybe they can fix this. Maybe Taako won’t leave him. He doesn’t pay much attention to the movie, to be honest, more preoccupied with the rise and fall of Taako’s chest, with every time Taako’s gaze flicks toward his, and for the first time he lets himself hope.

He’d thought it impossible that Taako would like him back. They’ve been friends for  _years_ , and Kravitz is just — Kravitz just falls in love too easily, and Taako isn’t like that, Taako keeps his secrets close to his chest. More than anything, Kravitz doesn’t want to ruin their friendship, and sitting here on this ratty couch watching a Ghibli movie, curled together, he hopes that at least that hasn’t died.

The room is warm, and at his side Taako is warmer, and before long Kravitz finds himself nodding off, until he finally gives in to his leaden eyelids and tucks his head against Taako’s shoulder and falls, blissfully, to sleep.

* * *

Kravitz wakes up to fire in his chest and thickness in his throat.

He topples off of whatever was keeping him upright, doubling over his lap. One hand flies to his throat as he gags. There’s not enough — he doesn’t have enough air to properly cough so he curls tighter in on himself, struggling for air and failing.

There’s a hand on his back and Kravitz remembers, suddenly,  _Taako_.

“Go,” he rasps, chest heaving painfully. Already his eyes are stinging and he can feel moisture at the corners of his eyes. “Go — ”

No matter how quickly he tries to breathe, how desperate and shallow his pants, he can’t get enough air. His throat feels tight, thicker than he can ever remember, and he remembers the heads of roses framed by patchwork carpet and realizes, with sudden and crystal clarity, that he might die.

His head is spinning from lack of oxygen. He tries to tell Taako to leave — he doesn’t want Taako to see this — but chokes on his own words.

His other hand latches out, expecting cushions and finding flesh instead and Kravitz can’t think clearly enough to connect that to Taako. As relentless coughs wrack him he grips Taako’s knee, sliding off the couch and onto the floor, curled over himself. The arm and leg go with him and suddenly he’s tucked against someone else’s body, and there’s a voice calling his name — he knows that voice —

He convulses breathlessly, tears streaming down his face, something splintering in his chest. He’s on fire,  _gods_  he’s on fire, something is burning him up from the inside and leaving him without air. This is the worst it’s ever been, by far, something is  _wrong_ —

His shoulders twitch, slamming his head forward, and he almost hits the coffee table except another hand braces it, cradling his cheeks. From between blurred eyes Kravitz can see his own knees — he’s wearing black pants, he’s always wearing black pants — and full roses’s heads spilled around his knees, except they’re not just his there are others, too, tucked against his, his own hand white-knuckled and desperate around a different knee —

He sucks in a strangled breath, then another and another. The high whine of his own breath scraping through a thin tube grates against his ears and he shudders, he shudders and can’t stop shuddering, tipping sideways as dizziness claims him into something soft, something warm.

Finally,  _finally_ , something dislodges in his throat and he coughs it up, spits it out onto the carpet. He slumps sideways, shaking violently. Slowly his hearing returns, and his sensation of touch, though that doesn’t do him much good, because he couldn’t hold anything right now even if he wanted to.

“Kravitz,” that voice says again, and finally he has enough air to remember he’s not alone.

He lifts a hand to sign for water, and stops halfway through, remembering that this isn’t Raven and Taako doesn’t know their signs, but before he can clear his throat to croak a request Taako presses a bottle into his hands. After a moment, he reaches over and unscrews it, too.

Kravitz fumbles with the bottle, fighting to keep his hands steady enough to drink, and takes a long gulp of water. It slides down his throat and he sighs, letting strength slip back into his bones even as exhaustion hardens and drags him down.

“Thanks,” he rasps.

Taako takes the bottle from him wordlessly, sets it back on the table. Kravitz lets his eyes slip shut, head tipping back to rest on the couch cushions. His knees are crammed uncomfortably against the coffee table but he can’t bring himself to care.

Slowly, he realizes that the arm around his shoulders never left.

“Sorry,” Kravitz says, letting a faint smile slide across his lips. “Didn’t want you to see that.”

“You don’t have pneumonia, do you,” Taako asks, except it’s not really a question.

With all the effort of hefting a mountain aside Kravitz lifts his head, cracks open his eyes. “No.”

“You never did.”

Kravitz huffs a quiet laugh. “Never did.”

Something slides along his scalp and Kravitz leans into it, fighting to keep his eyes open. He’s still shaking like a leaf — or, heh, like a petal. The sensation coalesces into five points of contact and this is probably rude, but Kravitz can’t bring himself to pull away; Taako’s hand in his hair feels so nice….

“How long has this been going on?”

“Don’t,” Kravitz murmurs.

“How long?”

“Taako….”

The hand around his wrist clenches. “Tell me, Kravitz.”

He sighs, lets his eyes fall shut. “Three years.”

“Three — ” There’s a note of indignation high in Taako’s voice and Kravitz winces, head still spinning. “Three years.”

“Mhmm.”

“That’s….” Taako trails off, and Kravitz imagines rather than sees him shake his head disbelievingly. A small smile creeps over Kravitz’s face; he knows Taako so well.

Taako’s hand keeps caressing his hair and Kravitz drifts, there, still shaking with exhaustion and teetering above sleep. He slumps against the couch cushions, vaguely aware but not quite that his back is going to ache in the morning, that the high whine isn’t the old radiator Raven bought for them when she was twelve, but him.

“Why?”

The question is so quiet that Kravitz almost thinks he imagined it. “Why what?”

“Why do you — why do you keep them?”

Taako’s never sounded distraught like this before, and Kravitz knows Taako very well. He forces his eyes open and looks at Taako, head spinning. Taako watches him with that strange expression Kravitz doesn’t recognize, arm still curled around the back of his head. “Because I love you,” Kravitz murmurs. “Even if — if this doesn’t…I don’t want to forget that.”

“It’s  _hurting_ you, Kravitz.”

He smiles, pitching forward before he catches himself. “Y’sound like Raven,” he slurs.

Breath hisses between Taako’s teeth, and he lets out a quiet “Oh.” He’s realized — his clever love has realized why Raven doesn’t like him. Maybe they’ll get along better, once this is over. He likes the idea of Taako and Raven getting along.

“‘s not your fault,” Kravitz insists. “‘s not — ‘s not your fault.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Taako says. “Of course — ”

He breaks off. Kravitz should open his eyes because at some point he’d tipped forward and buried his face in Taako’s shoulders but he’s so warm, and Taako is not soft so much as he is sharp but Kravitz’s jaw fits perfectly along the line of his shoulder, his collarbone, and he nearly falls asleep there again before he remembers something important.

“The roses,” he breathes. “The jar — I started a new one, could you…” he waves as best he can toward the flowers scattered around his feet, though it comes out more as a flop of his wrist.

Kravitz can hear Taako swallow through his collarbone. It sounds easy, for him. Strong. Kravitz smiles.

“Yeah,” Taako whispers, sounding oddly choked, which makes Kravitz frown; Taako shouldn’t be the one choking. “Yeah, I — I got it, Krav.”

“Thanks,” he murmurs.

“What — are you going back to sleep?”

“Mhmm.”

It occurs to Kravitz, slowly, that the steady  _thump-thump_  he can hear in Taako’s chest is his heartbeat. He’s never heard it before, and he listens now, entranced; it’s so strong, so sure. Just like Taako. Just like his sister. His sister always had a strong heartbeat, too. She never cried for his parents, not like him; Kravitz cried until his head ached and he fell asleep on her lap.

“Not here,” Taako mutters, and the fingers carding through his hair leave and he bites back a whine at the lack of contact. Then they reappear, beneath the crook of his knee and his back. Surprised, Kravitz latches onto his neck.

“Taako?”

“You’re going to wake up with a backache,” Taako says.

“‘s fine — ‘m fine, Taako.”

“Hush.” Taako readjusts Kravitz in his arms and carries him into his bedroom, spreads him out over the blankets.

“Thanks,” Kravitz slurs. “Roses — ”

“Yeah,” Taako says, voice oddly tight. “Yeah, I won’t forget.”

A few minutes pass before Taako reenters the room, during which Kravitz fights for consciousness. He should be more embarrassed about this, but it doesn’t feel bad; it feels like when Raven took care of him when they were both little. He trusts Taako. He trusts Taako still.

There’s the sound of a jar lid popping, the soft rustle of petals that Kravitz is so familiar with, and a strange beat of silence before Taako closes the jar again.

“Hey,” he says from somewhere by the foot of the bed. “You’re — you aren’t under the covers, silly.”

“‘s fine.”

“It — ” Taako sighs and Kravitz feels bad. He’s being high-maintenance right now. “Scoot over, Krav.”

He does, and Taako rearranges the blankets around him, pulling them all the way up to his chin. “Hey, Kravitz.”

“Mm?”

“You’re — ” Taako hesitates. “How often do you get those, uh — how often do those attacks come? At night?”

Kravitz shrugs. His eyes are already shut and they’re so, so heavy. “Not often.”

“But sometimes.”

Kravitz hums noncommittally. “Sometimes.”

There’s another beat of silence and Kravitz wonders, vaguely, how many of Taako’s heartbeats would’ve fit into that one. He would’ve liked to find out. Then the bedsprings creak as someone else climbs into bed behind him, but no rustle of the covers. Kravitz rolls, comes face-to-face with Taako.

“Just go to sleep,” Taako says, seeing the confusion on his face. He fluffs his own pillow and makes himself comfortable. Taako sleeps on his side because he slept with Lup when they were kids, and he and Lup always slept back to back. Kravitz knows a lot about Taako.

Kravitz hums — not a musical hum, he hasn’t sang in a long time — but a gentle hum of agreement, and is asleep within moments.

When he wakes, the bed is made, and Taako is gone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wild Merle appears. Things get worse, gradually, before they get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: pretty painful attack in this one. He's fine though. Well, mostly.

Kravitz takes the morning slowly.

Both he and Raven are early risers as custom, and it’s in the predawn light that Kravitz realizes his bed is empty, the couch vacant and its blankets untouched. The kitchen is cleaned from the disaster left from the party, but there’s not so much as a coffee mug on the table — Taako’s coffee is fragrant and delicious and Kravitz misses it.

Kravitz shows Raven the full-headed roses over Skype with a wry grin. It takes him fifteen minutes of constant pleading to convince her to go to work this week, and even then she takes the day off. They’re both stubborn — always have been.

Raven tries to convince him to stay home, at least for a day, but just as she did he digs in his heels and refuses to be swayed. Yes, he’s sick, and yes there’s leave for those with his condition and  _yes_  he works with Lup and Barry, but his life hasn’t ended yet and Kravitz refuses to stop until it does.

Kravitz doesn’t dare drive. On the train he passes his phone between his hands. Three times he opens the chat he and Taako share — their last messages, from yesterday, before Taako started cooking, are an aimless critique of red carpet fashion and a debate about cats versus mongeese — and three times he closes it, chest hurting.

Once he sends a message:  _Are you okay?_

The rest of the ride passes, and he gets no response.

Lup and Barry aren’t at work, which is odd. Lup has called in sick for everything from cliff diving with Magnus to feeding a neighbor’s cat — which Kravitz knows because Taako told him — but Kravitz can count on one hand the number of times Barry has missed. The man rivals Kravitz in terms of attendance.

He suffers an attack once, that day. At this point it’s routine to smother his coughs as he strides from the room, to bend breathless over the sink. It passes, and not quickly.

He gets home in time to hug his sister goodbye, brush away her fears. She never cries — not for him, not his parents — but he sees worry clear in her eyes.

* * *

A day passes, then two. There’s no word from Taako; Raven calls him three times a day. His voice gets weaker with every call. Lup and Barry don’t show up to work.

Kravitz reads and rereads Taako’s critiques of an off-shoulder dress, then his own inane snark about mongeese, until he knows the words by heart. He calls once, twice, three times, and leaves voicemails; inane little things, fighting to keep pain from his voice. More than anything he just misses talking to Taako. On the first he can affect cheer, but by the third he has to hang up abruptly to his voice from breaking and he limits himself to texts, after that.

The texts on his end pick up over those two days:  _Are you there? Taako, are you all right? I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry._

_I miss you._

Tuesday evening, he gets a text:  _Why didn’t you tell me?_

Kravitz types and erases and retypes. A dozen responses unfurl in the chatbox and he deletes every one. In the cool empty dark of his living room Kravitz bites his thumb.

Finally he types, simply:  _Because I didn’t want to lose you_ , and lets the ensuing silence speak for itself.

* * *

He wakes up Wednesday morning unable to breathe.

He fumbles for his phone, hits speed dial. Raven answers immediately. He barely makes it through her name before she’s running toward her car, shouting at him to stay awake.

How strange she must look, he thinks, running out of her flat and begging the open sky to breathe.

* * *

“I couldn’t call in sick,” he rasps when Raven sprints through the door.

Her hair is falling from the neat bun in which she normally keeps it, one sleeve half-rolled up her forearm, and she laughs breathlessly at his words. He beams at the sound. He loves making his sister laugh.

“How are you?”

“Not good,” he says. Even like this, reclined in bed, his breath whines high in his throat. “It’s getting worse.”

She places a hand on his forehead, cups his throat gently. “It is.”

Raven slides atop the covers next to him, a silent crease forming between her brows. “You sounded awful,” she says. “This morning.”

“Love you too.”

“Kravitz.”

He sticks out his tongue. “People keep saying my name like that,” he mutters. “Hate it.”

She smooths his hair back from his forehead. “It’s because we’re worried about you.”

He can’t help the bitter snort that shakes out of his mouth. “Not all of you.”

“Has he called you?” Raven asks, mouth set.

Kravitz shakes his head.

“Texted?”

“Once.” He waves toward his phone and she picks it up, unlocks it. She knows his passcode, of course — T-A-C-O.

He should change it.

It takes Raven a handful of moments to read, and Kravitz lets his eyes slip closed. The click of the phone turning off sounds and Raven inhales sharply once, twice, three times, trying to work out what to say.

“It’s not been two weeks,” she says. “I know that. But I think it’s time to consider our options seriously.”

“I know.”

“Kravitz, you nearly died.”

He grins. “Know that too.”

“This isn’t — ” she breaks off, frustrated.

“Sorry,” he says. He hates breaking her composure. “I gotta joke about it, y’know? Or else…it’s a lot.”

“Kravitz, look at me.”

Kravitz obliges. She’s watching him intently, jaw clenched tight. “This has gone on long enough. It’s been three years, and he’s not even — he’s not doing you the courtesy of responding. It hurts, I know it does, but he just — he doesn’t care.”

Kravitz flinches. “He does.”

Raven pulls up the sparse chat, shows him the screen. Unnecessary; he memorized its contents three days ago. “Does he?”

Kravitz fiddles with the hem of his blanket. He wants to sit up, at least look her in the eye, but he’s stuck with a rasping breath and a chest that ignites whenever he shifts his body. “I think he does,” Kravitz says quietly. “He’s just bad at showing it. I scared him.”

“You’re  _dying_ , Kravitz.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“Because he hasn’t bothered to ask!”

“Raven, can we not — ”

“We need to talk about this.” She shuts off his phone and sets it aside. “There is no later anymore, Kravitz. It’s now or never.”

His sister doesn’t frill her speech; doesn’t indulge in metaphors. It is, quite literally, now or never. There’s a precipice of no return that his feet are dangling over and he’s toeing the edge, almost ready to fall.

He fell a long time ago.

“This isn’t just about him.”

“Those are  _his flowers!_ ”

“But it’s not just that.” Kravitz reaches weakly for his hand and she takes it. Only from this close does he realize that her hands, too, are shaking. “I’ve done research, Raven. I might not just lose him. My capacity to love, Raven, I — I could lose everyone.” He swallows. “I could lose you.”

“The chances of that are small, Kravitz.”

“And they’re not ones I’m willing to take.” He holds his sister’s hand close to his heart. “Raven, you know me. You — you know me better than anyone. I’m not willing to live like that. I can’t live without love. You  _know_ that.”

“Just — ” her voice stutters and breaks and fear grips him. Gods, she might start crying. He starts to sit up, to hold her, but she pushes him back down, eyes shining but firm. “I can’t lose you. I can’t do that, Kravitz.”

“You lose me either way,” he says softly. “I’m sorry, Ray. It wouldn’t be — it wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t know anybody, I wouldn’t love anybody, and it wouldn’t — I couldn’t. I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” she whispers. She shuts her eyes, briefly, bows her head. “Yes, you can. It would be — harder, it wouldn’t be like it is now, but I would still love you, Kravitz, and I would take care of you.”

“I know,” Kravitz says. He struggles upright, bats her hands away when she tries to push him back down. He slumps against his headboard with a pained sigh. “I know you would. I never doubted that. But I don’t want to live like that. Even without — even without Taako, I couldn’t do it — not without Sloane and Hurley, Julia. Not without you.”

* * *

Later that afternoon, it happens again.

Unable to stand the monotony of his ceiling, he hobbled with Raven’s help to the couch. She dozes in an armchair, and when he starts to cough she springs up, at his side in less than a moment.

He can feel the gap in his windpipe closing, and closing, and sealing, until — there’s nothing. He cannot breathe. The roses in his throat are in full bloom, and where once there was a whistle of air threading through their petals, there is nothing.

Kravitz doesn’t fight it; he’d rather die with dignity, hands clasped with someone he loves, than make his sister watch him die in pain.

She’s calling for him, screaming — not crying, still, never his strong, brave sister — but he can’t hear her. He watches her, fighting every instinct in his body, and curves his lips into a smile.  _It’s okay_ , he wants to tell her.  _Don’t cry for those who have gone on_.  _Weep for those left behind._

The world spins and Kravitz’s eyes slip closed of their own accord, and before the world goes dark he squeezes his sister’s hand.

* * *

Then he wakes up.

It’s violent and painful and he bites down on an agonized scream, and even as is he hears himself make a noise he’s never made before; his chest is burning, his head pounding so hard he can’t see and can’t hear. Can’t feel his hands at all, if they’re attached to his wrists or wrapped around his own chest in a futile attempt to knit himself back together, or still clenched around Taako’s knee or squeezing his sister’s hand —

“There we go, kiddo,” a gruff voice says above his head. As air trickles back into his lungs he becomes aware of a steadying hand on his shoulder, his sister’s fingers holding onto his own tight. Kravitz doesn’t open his eyes, not yet, but he realizes that his mouth tastes  _awful_.

He fights, and fights, and — he can breathe.

“Merle?” he croaks.

“Got it in one, kid.” The hand on his shoulder gives him a metallic little pat, and Kravitz looks up weakly in time to see him stow a vial of something murky and foul-looking in his pocket. “Glad you’re back with us.”

“Surprised I am, to be honest,” Kravitz croaks. With one weak hand he signals Raven and she grabs a water bottle, guides it to his lips. He thanks her quietly, and she shakes her head.

“Don’t you dare,” she says. “Don’t you dare.”

“How did you do that?”

Merle drags a wooden chair from in front of the fireplace, leans back into it with a relieved sigh. “This little gem,” he says, pulling the vial and ten more like it out of his pocket. “It’s, uh, glorified weed-killer, t’be blunt. Probably tastes like shit, from what I’ve heard, but should give you a little more time.”

Kravitz breathes experimentally, and — yeah, he can breathe a little easier. Sure, the inside of his throat stings like acid, but the whistle of air through a thin throat that follows him always is gone. No, not gone — but fainter.

“Thank you.”

Merle grunts. “T’quote your sister, don’t.”

“I would anyway.”

“Yeah, I know you would.” Merle eyes him keenly. “‘s for Taako, isn’t it.”

Kravitz drops his gaze, lands on the wilted roses’ heads scattered around the couch. A pang of loss shoots through him. They’re faded and gray. He’ll need to put them in a different jar, somewhere.

“It is,” Raven says. “It’s for your boy.”

Merle looks at her, then sighs. “Yeah, he’s mine.”

“Talk to him,” Raven snaps. “Make him see sense.”

“Raven — ”

“Wish I could,” Merle says. “Love isn’t somethin’ you talk into people. Love’s somethin’ you feel. Somethin’ you nourish, and care for. You can cut it out, if you want, but that’s a dangerous line t’walk.” He adjusts his eyepatch with a sigh. “Wish I had somethin’ better for you, kid, but I can’t make my kid fall out of love any more than you can make him fall out of it.”

“Then bring him here,” Raven says. “Let him see what he’s done.”

“You’d make him do that?” Merle asks evenly. “Knowing it’s not his fault?”

“He hasn’t spoken to Kravitz since he found out.”

“Raven, please,” Kravitz pleads, laying a hand on her knee.

“No.” She takes his other hand, squeezes it, and lays it back on his chest. “He’s running from this. He doesn’t — he doesn’t get to run from this. It’s not fair to you, Kravitz.”

“It‘s not fair to him though, either,” Kravitz argues. “Not his fault. It’s only been three days and he doesn’t know.”

Merle arches an eyebrow. “He doesn’t?”

“Not like I could tell him,” Kravitz says, mustering a smile. “He isn’t picking up. Don’t think he’s reading my texts, either.” He pauses, fiddles with his thumbs. “Also, I haven’t put that in my texts. Or voicemails.”

Raven stares at him. “You didn’t?”

Kravitz shakes his head. Merle cocks a head at him. “Huh.”

“Huh?” Raven tenses. “That’s all you have, just  _huh?_ ”

“That’s all I got. Well, that and this.” Merle hands her the vials. “Three drops every four hours. Should fend it off for a little while. Won’t be pretty, and it won’t be fun.” Merle stands, then considers Kravitz. “I’m gonna shoot straight, kid. It’s gonna hurt like hell.”

Kravitz shrugs. “I’ve survived so far.”

For the first time since Kravitz opened his eyes, Merle grins. “That’s what I like to hear,” he says. “Taako tells me you got a guest bedroom?”

Raven stares at him. “Yeah,” Kravitz says, and nods toward the door. “Over there. Small, though.”

“I sleep there,” Raven says, then shakes herself. “Why are you staying?”

Merle, already halfway to the door, pauses. “I’m a healer, kid,” he says. “This is what I do. ‘n sure, ‘s not good practice to operate when you got an emotional attachment, but…” he shrugs, gears whirring in his shoulder, “Like hell am I leaving.”

Raven’s face tightens. There are dark bags underneath her eyes, tension in the line of her jaw. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.” Merle nods at her, winks at Kravitz, and waddles on into his appropriated room.

Kravitz turns to her. “Where are you gonna sleep?”

“Your room,” she says. She laces their fingers together. “You shouldn’t move until you feel better.”

“Raven — ”

“No.” Her hand tightens around his. “You’re going to get better.”

He doubts it; he doesn’t tell her that. Instead, he chuckles, squeezes her hand, and says “Okay.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The songbird tries to sing.

He spends the evening and subsequent morning trembling more often than not. His sister is quick to help whenever his body racks with coughs, steadying hands on his shoulders, his chest, his cheeks. The weed-killer concoction Merle whipped up tastes absolutely foul, but it tastes better than literally dying, so Kravitz will take what he can get.

In truth, he breathes more easily than he has in weeks. But the attacks only grow steadily more frequent as the hours wear on, and by five in the morning the next day Merle tells Raven gruffly to lay off the weed-killer or she’s going to tear holes in his stomach and then he’ll start coughing up blood for real.

Kravitz can’t convince her to sleep, though he tries, plaintively, for three hours. He’s a big boy, he points out, a wry twist to his lips, and besides if he needs anything he has Merle; even still, he wins only by pointing out that they’re out of groceries and he’d like to not die of nutrient-deprivation before the disease gets him.

“An hour,” she promises, keys in hand. “I’ll just be gone an hour. Hold — hold on.”

“Holding,” he says, and smiles for her as best he can.

As soon as she’s gone he slumps back against the couch and stares at the ceiling. He’d traced the pattern of whirls on their ceiling hundreds of times when he was child, but it’s different now; the graceful swoops seem shorter, their ends more abrupt.

He tries his best not to read too deep into that.

* * *

Ten minutes after Raven leaves, he tries to sing.

He’d put on musicals, when he was a kid. Stupid songs he’d improvise. He was all of the characters at once; a healer and a fighter and a wizard sometimes, a Grim Reaper the next, Death incarnate with apologies on his lips. His vocal range was small but he pretended it wasn’t, warbling his way through melodies best left for sopranos and ruffling through bass-parts.

Later she bought him a piano, a tiny thing held together more by tape than wood, but the keys worked and Kravitz was entranced. He’d spend hours, hours that Raven needed to study, to work, plucking through melodies and making his own music.

She never complained, not once. He smiled so freely, pulling beauty from keys of fake-ivory and hard plastic.

She loved it when he sang. Raven would never say it — lies are not her way but obfuscation is, because she would never hurt him — but she misses them, he knows. She put up with some ten years of truly horrendous singing — he knows, because she took videos on shitty phone cameras she purchased secondhand from the sketchy store below their flat — before his voice matured into something pleasant.

Songbird, she called him. The only nickname she’d ever given him.

He hasn’t heard it in three years.

He starts with an easy note; a low C, perfectly middle range. It scrapes and shuffles along his throat and he clears it, ignoring the pricking at his eyes. He can do this. He  _can_. He’s going to sing for her, one last time.

It comes out as a puff of air. He tries something higher, a G; he thinks he’s got it, briefly, and hope flares in his chest until he realizes that it’s an octave up and not his voice at all, but the whistle in his throat.

Okay. Okay, he tells himself; he can do this. He clears his throat, reaches for a drink of water — it’s warm, and he’s grateful, because cold water freezes a singer’s vocal cords and makes control of vibrato difficult — and tries again.

He tries the whole scale three times over. Twenty-one notes. Not a single one sounds anything like music, the farthest thing from a songbird’s lilting melody.

 _One last time_ , he thinks, crumpling over himself. He cries, quietly; he just wanted to sing, one last time. Just for her, so she’d have something happy to remember of him.

By the time he’s finished his eyes are red and swollen, his nose running, and he’s grateful at least that Raven wasn’t there to see that. Maybe he’ll steal the camera she keeps the video on — he knows where she keeps them, they’re in her room, and it’s not hard to find because both of their rooms are tiny — and send it to her, sometime this week. He doesn’t want her to forget that there were good times, before all…this.

He heaves himself onto one elbow, grasping blindly for his phone. He finds it, unlocks it, pointedly not thinking about his passcode, and dials a number with shaking fingers.

“Hey, Kravitz!”

“Julia,” Kravitz says. Only in comparison to hers does he realize just how awful, how spindly and cracked, his own voice sounds. “Do you have a minute?”

“Of course. You sound like hell, my dude.”

“I know. Hey, listen, Julia, there’s, uh…” he trails off, clears his throat. “I’m spitting up flowers.”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh, shit.”

He grins. “Oh shit is right.”

“You’re this bad already?”

“Hey, fuck you too,” he says, slipping on a dumb accent. It earns him a disgusted groan, as he knew it would, but the sound makes him smile.

There’s a beat of silence (and he wonders, briefly, again, as he has so often as he stared up at the ceiling; how many of Taako’s heartbeats would fit into this silence), and then she says, “How long?”

“Three years.”

“Huh,” she says. There’s a shuffling as she stands — Julia always needed to be moving, did awful on those standardized tests, the ones that stretched for six hours because she could only stand every other hour — and he hears her pacing. “You need me to come over?”

“No,” he says. “Thank you, but I just — wanted to talk to someone, I guess.”

Another silence. Her footsteps clack through the phone. Her whole house, the one she and Magnus built together, is made of wooden floors, polished and lacquered. “This sounds late-stage.”

Kravitz clears his throat. He hadn’t expected her to realize. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Couple days at most.”

“Huh.”

Her footsteps have stopped. Kravitz listens to her breathing, faint though it is; it’s strong and uninterrupted and for the first time he feels over-conscious of his own. He sounds thin and reedy and frail and he itches with the need to get up, to do  _something_  other than lie around and wallow in his ineffectiveness —

“I ever tell you how me and Magnus met?”

Kravitz snorts. “Only about six times, Julia.”

“Hey, it’s a good story.” He can hear her smile through the phone. “But you never heard the full story, bone boy.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,  _oh_.” A lull, then a whoosh of air as she sits; probably the red armchair, the one by their fireplace. That one’s her favorite. When Kravitz visits her, her and Magnus, he takes the purple one, so close their feet brush. “Listen, all of us have got secrets.”

“At least yours aren’t life-threatening,” he mutters, before his mind catches up with his mouth. “Oh, shit,” he says. “That sounded, uh, shitty — ”

“No stress. You’re dying; that sucks.”

In some ways, Julia is even more blunt than his sister. Where his sister keeps secrets, sometimes, Julia is an open book. “Yeah.”

“Tell me if you need me to come over,” she says. “So I was in the mountains, that part was true, about two hours out west.”

“And you met Magnus in a pub.”

“Not quite,” Julia laughs. “So you know how I go hunting.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, out west is bear country.”

“Oh my gods.”

He can hear her shrug. “Good hunting, Krav. Anyway, so I killed this bear — ”

“It didn’t kill you first?” he interrupts, swallowing down his own laughter. He doesn’t want to irritate his throat any more than it already is, but he feels lighter. Julia makes him feel better.

“Not a thing on this earth that could kill me.”

“Except, you know, the passage of time.”

“No, I’m gonna be immortal,” Julia says. “Stop interrupting, you want the full thing or not?”

“Sorry, please go on.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m not at all,” he snickers.

“You’re a wonderful person, Kravitz, but sometimes you’re awful. So: me, holding a dead bear. I had to haul it down the mountain, because I didn’t bring a cart and, y’know, you gotta take those things with you somehow. So I string it up over my shoulder and head on down the trail. Now this thing’s all rocky and muddy, buncha branches and stuff, but this is where Sherpa training came in handy ‘cause I hopped right over that stuff — oh hey, Mags.”

Faintly he hears Magnus’s voice through the receiver. “Yeah,” Julia says. “It’s Kravitz.” A beat, then, “No, he’s got hanahaki.”

Kravitz lets his head fall back against the pillow, phone pinned between his ear and the pillow. “Three years. Yes, for Taako. Hey, Kravitz?”

“Hmm?”

“Taako called you?”

Kravitz swallows, hard. “No,” he says.

Julia hums, relays this to Magnus. Then, “I’m telling him how we met, babe,” she says, then, “I’m putting you on speaker ‘cause Magnus wants to talk too, except just remember that he’s a lying liar that lies.”

“I’m an honest country man!”

“You led a rebellion,” she says dryly.

“So did you!”

“Besides the point,” she sniffs. Kravitz listens to them, smiling and aching at the same time; their easy banter reminds him of — of himself and Taako, before Taako emerged from his bedroom carrying a jar full of petals. This could have been his, if he’d been better. If he’d been more honest, more like Julia and Magnus; if he’d just reached out harder.

Maybe Taako deserves better than him.

Either way, Kravitz thinks, it’s a moot point now; he won’t last long enough to find out. He hopes that, whatever happens when he’s gone, Taako finds happiness in someone.

Magnus’s voice crackles through the phone. “Kravitz.”

“Yeah?”

“You all right?”

“Peachy,” he says, then winces. That’s Taako’s word. “I mean — fine, I’m doing fine. Thank you for asking.”

“Horseshit,” Julia says. “But okay, we’ve got your attention now. Anyway, so I’m coming down the mountain, bear strung over my shoulders, and this buffoon — ”

“ — hey! — ”

“ — walks out right in front of me, a knife and wooden duck in his hands, and we collide and everything in our hands go flying. The bear carcass in my hands impales itself on Magnus’s tiny knife — ”

“ — it was a big knife,” Magnus protests. “I have big knives.”

Julia snorts. “Your knives are lovely, dear, but I’m talking about the physical, actual knives. This call is a no-innuendo zone.”

“Oh.” Magnus considers this, and Kravitz can almost see the sheepish smile stretch across his face. “Okay then.”

It takes them ten minutes to wind their way through their tale, and Kravitz finds himself laughing. Their harmony is so easy and natural, and even though Kravitz envies it he relishes in it, too. They’re lights; they’re the perfect harmony to a melody that wrote itself.

Embarrassingly, he does have to cut them off, once, to hack the newest blooms out of his throat; but when he returns to the call, neither of them comment, and for that Kravitz is grateful.

* * *

Later that evening Raven helps him wash, re-dress, and sits him down with beeswax and a fine-toothed comb.

She sections his hair smoothly, twisting her comb through each one. For half an hour Kravitz loses himself in the motion of her fingers, the gentle tug of hair against his scalp, the nape of his neck. His sister’s fingers are long and calloused but with him, she’s always been gentle.

He can hear Merle, snoring away in the other room. It had been the dwarf who’d told them both, with a sensitivity that Kravitz had never expected from the bawdy man, that Kravitz has started spitting up blood — here he’d pointed out a stain on the roses’ petals, nearly indistinguishable from their normal scarlet coloring — and he needed to stop with the herbicide or he’d bleed out before the obstruction in his airway could get him.

To tell the truth, Kravitz isn’t sure what they’re waiting for. He’s good as dead already. But Raven refuses to let him stop; keeps him breathing in the small hours of the morning when he just wants it to  _end_ , he just wants to breathe again, wants to get rid of the persistent ache in his chest from not enough air. He’s stubborn but he’s never been able to match her in stubbornness.

Besides, he can’t leave her. More than anything, he fights for that.

He checks his phone without much hope, and each time sees the same thing: his background, empty. He wonders if Taako even checked his texts, listened to his voicemails, or if he blocked Kravitz altogether. It seems silly, to die for a love so clearly unreturned, but more than anything Kravitz knows he could not live without loving his sister and his dearest friends.

Julia and Magnus hadn’t spoken another word on his condition during their conversation, a fact for which Kravitz is devoutly grateful. Though toward the end he couldn’t say much to them, it was nice to pretend, even just for an hour or so, that everything was okay.

His sister finishes the last of his twists and stops, and something curious happens: she spreads her fingers over his temple, then Kravitz feels a forehead press against the back of his head.

“Raven?”

“I’m okay,” she whispers.

There’s a quiet sniff from behind him, and Kravitz freezes. He does not turn around. One of her hands leaves his scalp to clap over her mouth, her shoulders tensing, and Kravitz reaches up to cover a hand with his own.

“No tears for me,” he says gently. “I will be okay.”

“I know,” she says, her voice as unsteady as Kravitz has ever heard it. If he doesn’t look back he can pretend she’s not crying. “I know you will be, and I know that it’ll be happier than — than this, but Kravitz, I….”

“I love you,” he says. “I love you. I’m sorry I have to leave you alone.”

“It’s okay,” she says. Her second lie of the evening.

“It isn’t.” Tears be damned, he shifts to his knees and embraces his sister, lets her head fall to his shoulder without complaint. This time he rests a cheek on the top of her head, fingers threading through the small hairs at the nape of his neck. “It isn’t okay, and it’s allowed to not be okay. Just — talk to someone, okay? When all this is over? Merle, or Julia, or Sloane. Someone.”

For the first time, Raven doesn’t protest that there won’t be an end. Doesn’t urge him to keep fighting for a nebulous continuation he’s not sure he even wants.

“I will.”

“Promise?”

She huffs a broken laugh. “I promise, Kravitz.”

He musters all his strength, that evening, to tuck her in bed, turn out the lights. His chest is on fire the whole time, like he can feel his ribs splintering, but he kisses her forehead and turns out the lights and stumbles back to the couch, catching himself heavily on the arm. Wincing, he slides his back against the cushions and stares at the ceiling.

Even in this, a relatively good moment, it hurts to breathe. He can’t get quite enough air and it drives him mad, that anxious tension always below his sternum. He can’t breathe, his hands shake, his eyes water of their own accord and dehydration headaches are his constant companions; not only because he cries out what he drinks but because the damn roses take it to keep themselves alive.

Again he traces the aimless patterns on the ceiling with his eyes, then shuts them with lips pursed.

For the first time, he lets himself get angry.

It’s not a sensation he feels often. Justice is his shtick; normally when he’s angry it’s at an abstract concept, like capitalism or the disparity in wage gaps between all sorts of people. When he was younger he wanted to be a lawyer; he’s training to be a doctor, now, for the idealistic notion that he could save people.

At first that anger directs toward himself, deflecting from its true target because how  _stupid_ , how childish and naive, to think that he could save anyone else when he can’t save himself. How foolish to think he could coax life back into his patients when he couldn’t even coax love into the one person who mattered the most.

Then he takes a deep, steeling breath and thinks  _no;_  this isn’t his fault.

He can’t blame Taako for not loving him but the fact of his absence sits bitterly on the back of Kravitz’s tongue. He hasn’t called, he hasn’t texted — no one’s so much as spoken his name in the past three days, and for the first time since Raven proposed it Kravitz considers: maybe he really didn’t care.

Maybe, those ten years, Taako didn’t care at all.

The thought makes him feel sick so he shelves it, willing his breathing to calm, and tries to go to sleep. His throat aches so hard he thinks perhaps he’s going to die tonight, Merle in one room and Raven far away in the other but figures, when the time comes, he’ll work it out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas (and happy holidays!), y'all! Here it is: the very final chapter of this fic. Told you there would be a happy ending. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, find me on tumblr at [believingbrook](http://believingbrook.tumblr.com), and one last time, please check out this incredible fanart by ungarmax on tumblr [here](https://believingbrook.tumblr.com/post/178365087452/ungarmax-believingbrook-wrote-such-a-beautiful)!

He wakes up to the overhead light clicked on dimly and Taako standing in the doorway.

Kravitz looks at him, brows furrowed. “Already?” he rasps. He would’ve thought he’d at least wake up before he died.

He never did say goodbye to Raven. He never got to sing for her again. Somehow, that hurts the most.

“Oh my gods,” says Taako. Even silhouetted by moonlight and the faint overhead bulb, he’s beautiful. “Holy — Kravitz?”

Kravitz laughs. He sits up, and is instantly slammed backward with a wave of racking pain, devolves into coughs for a handful of seconds before slumping back down, gasping. Damn. Not dead, then.

Which means —

“Don’t — don’t do that, just lie back down, what the  _hell_ , Kravitz, I didn’t — are you okay?”

Which, objectively, is a dumb question.

Two slim hands flutter frightfully over his head, butterflies looking to land but not knowing where, and Kravitz reaches up weakly to take one in his own.

It’s real. He stares at it, uncomprehending. It’s solid in his own, and it squeezes his, tight enough to be painful.

Then he looks up at Taako, who’s looking at him with fear plain on his face.

The facts don’t add up: that Taako is here, Taako is scared for him, and that this is real. This isn’t a dream, and he isn’t dead.

“Kravitz,” Taako says, kneeling by the couch, “Kravitz, can you — can you hear me? Gods, it didn’t take your hearing too, did it? I have — I don’t know how this works — ”

“I can hear you,” Kravitz says hoarsely. He’s still puzzling over the angles of Taako’s face. “You’re here.”

Taako bursts into a high-pitched laugh. “Yeah, homie, I’m here, I — hachi machi, you look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Kravitz says dryly. Then, because he’s exhausted and has no filter: “What are you doing here?”

“I — I got a call from Mags, told me you were in a, uh, uh, a bad fuckin’ way, and you were — that you weren’t doing great and I just had to — I couldn’t — ” Taako locks his jaw and looks away, running a shaking hand through his hair. “Does it hurt?”

“Like hell,” Kravitz says bluntly. Beneath all the exhaustion and joy and pity there’s a thin thread of anger holding him tight. “You left.”

Taako flinches. “Yeah.” He swallows, looks away, then back at Kravitz, gaze fluttering nervously around the living room. It’s like he’s never seen it before, which pisses Kravitz off, honestly; he’s been here hundreds of times, gods, there’s a Taako-shaped indentation on his couch. He has no right to forget what neither the furniture nor Kravitz cannot. “You scared me.”

“I  _scared you_?”

“That — sounds shitty, and it is, I know — look, Kravitz. Listen, I — ” his hands finally land on Kravitz’s and hold them, tightly. There is tension in every one of his fingers. “You told me, or I, uh, I found out, I guess, and I just — I freaked. I freaked out, okay? Because then suddenly a whole bunch of stuff made sense. Like in senior year you, uh, you missed that one test because you said you were throwing up, and you came in looking like hell. And I, uh — I couldn’t connect back then what was happening, of course, because you didn’t — and then you ran out of chemistry class, and I thought maybe you, I dunno, had to go call Raven or…or something, and just. A whole bunch of stuff made sense and I didn’t know how to deal with it because it’s on me, it’s all — on me, I mean, kinda, it’s really obvious in retrospect and I don’t know how I missed it,” he says, voice rising with something like hysteria. “But I didn’t want to see it because I didn’t know what to  _do_  with it, so Lup and Barry — they took me away — I mean, that makes it sound like it was a kidnapping, it wasn’t — that’s why they weren’t at work, by the way, I mean, if you even went to work? Did you?”

“I did,” he says. He sits up straighter and brushes off Taako’s attempt to help, anger pulling his face flat. “Why are you here, Taako?”

Taako blinks at the question. His head bows, for a moment, hair brushing in front of his face, and Kravitz notices with a start how greasy and unkempt it looks. From Taako, who cares about his appearance like he does little else, it’s a shock.

“I realized something,” he says. “Something that I should have — I dunno, seen a long time ago. You know me, I’m real good at, uh, at fuckin’, not seeing things I don’t wanna see.”

Kravitz smiles wryly at that. “Yeah.”

Taako shoots him a brief grin. He fiddles nervously with Kravitz’s fingers, which feels — nice. Taako has a lot to answer for, but at least he’s here. He didn’t think he would get to say goodbye to Taako.

“And I know this is, I dunno, comin’ out of left field for you — especially because I ran, and I know, I — I opened your texts, Kravitz, I turned off the — ” he clears his throat “ — the little, the receipts, you know them? I turned those off because I didn’t know what to say, and I listened to your voicemails, not just the ones from this week but from way back, I’ve been saving them, and — ” his voice breaks. He takes a deep breath, looks away for a moment, then exhales it shakily. “Every time I got angry, at — at you, at whoever made this…happen, to you, I guess that one’s kinda on Taako because it was obvious and I just, I missed the fuckin’ memo, I…I listened to them, Kravitz, over and over again. They made me feel better, somehow. Even when Lup couldn’t.” He laces his fingers with Kravitz’s, shoulders bowed. “You make me feel better. And not just about this, about…everything.”

“I’m glad,” Kravitz says hoarsely, and means it. “Taako, look at me.” He does, and Kravitz smiles at him softly. “I’m glad I could help.”

“Don’t,” Taako snaps abruptly. “Don’t do that, that — don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you — ” Taako’s expression crumples for a moment and he slumps against the coffee table, back where his boots were kicked a mere three days before. He takes a trembling breath, and this time it’s Taako fighting for air. Kravitz doesn’t like the reversal at all. “Listen, I did come here for a reason, and not just — to see you, though that was mostly it, I also came to…to tell you something.”

“Oh,” Kravitz says. He lets his eyes slip shut, then opens them again. “I didn’t think I’d get to say it either, but I’m glad you’re here.”

He squeezes Taako’s hand in his. Now that he’s here — it’s so obvious. Kravitz had known he would scare Taako, and that was exactly what happened, and now he’s here; he’s here to say goodbye.

That’s all Kravitz could have asked for, in the end. There’s still some simmering resentment but it’s dimmed, and Kravitz feels love; it never left, but it flickers fully to life now. Even prone on a couch he hangs onto that feeling, summons it to the forefront. It’s so nice, to love. It will kill him but he doesn’t regret it.

No, he thinks; he doesn’t regret anything.

“But you did,” Taako says, confused. “You did — I mean, kinda — ”

Kravitz frowns. “No, I didn’t. Taako, listen. Thank you for coming back, it…it means a lot. Truth be told, I didn’t know if you would.”

“Yeah,” Taako chokes. “Yeah, of — of course.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he murmurs. “I don’t think it’ll be more than a day or so. We don’t have any beds left, Merle took Raven’s and she’s in mine, but — there are pillows and blankets, you know where they are.”

Taako sits up. “A day until what?”

Kravitz looks at him curiously. “Until I die, Taako.”

“ _What?_ ”

“I thought that was why you were here,” Kravitz says. “To say goodbye. Are you not — ?”

“No!” Taako’s voice edges clean into hysteria, now. His grip on Kravitz’s hands is painful. “No, I’m not here to fucking — are you kidding? Are you kidding me? No, you’re not going to die!”

Kravitz rasps out another hoarse laugh. “You sound like Raven,” he says. “She keeps saying the same thing.”

Taako is looking at him in equal parts confusion and terror, and if he were strong enough Kravitz would wipe that expression away with his thumb, smoothing the wrinkles in Taako’s skin with only his palms.

“I didn’t come here to tell you goodbye, Kravitz,” Taako says fiercely, voice shaking. “I came here to tell you I love you.”

Kravitz breathes once, twice, into the ensuing silence. He stares at Taako, and Taako stares right back. The whole room is holding its breath, breathless, and for once it isn’t Kravitz.

Love swells up in him, powerful and sweeping, and he smiles gently. The flowers in his throat bloom brighter and he thinks that this is it, maybe; he may have less time than he thought. If Taako keeps making him fall harder, Kravitz thinks wryly, he might have less than the day Raven fought so hard to give him.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Kravitz says softly. “But Taako, I don’t want you to try to feel things that you — ” he chokes on nothing, he’s breathing in nothing, he can’t  _breathe_.

“I’m not — this isn’t a fucking joke, Kravitz, I’m not kidding — Kravitz?  _Kravitz?_ ”

Kravitz curls sharply in on himself. His chest heaves for air that  _doesn’t come_  and it’s bad, this is bad but it isn’t the worst, he’s breathing through a reed pipe but at least he’s breathing at all.

“Kravitz,” Taako says, whispers, pleads, hands on his shoulders and his cheeks and his chest, like Taako’s fingers can knit him back together where Merle’s magic failed. “Kravitz, don’t — breathe, just keep breathing, Kravitz,  _please_.”

“Go.” Kravitz swallows a cough and chokes, and all he can think about is how the last time Taako saw him like this, he left. “Please, go.”

“I’m not going fucking anywhere,” Taako snaps, and the couch shifts as Taako sits by him, two shaking hands resting on his shoulders. “Is there anything I can — how do I — how can I help?”

Kravitz shakes his head, waving a hand at him. Flowers spill unchecked from his lips and he retches, fighting as always, futilely, exhaustingly, to dislodge them from where they’ve rooted down their home in his ribs.

“Don’t you dare,” Taako says sharply, “don’t you dare, don’t you fucking— ” There are hands on his cheeks, thumbs wiping away the tears prickling at his eyes. Kravitz reaches up, takes those wrists in his and tries to push them away, but Taako refuses to go.

“Don’t,” Taako says. The world is spinning; Kravitz feels lightheaded, and when he cracks his eyes open between open-mouthed pants the room is blurred and shaky. Taako runs his hands along Kravitz’s arms, down his chest, up his neck and into his hair, holding him steady. “You can’t leave now, you can’t, I still haven’t — it’s just fucking rude to leave when — when someone has something to say and you aren’t, you’re not rude that’s just about the last thing you are, don’t — don’t leave. Don’t leave me.”

Kravitz hacks out a laugh, at the bitter irony of Taako trying to get  _him_ not to leave, but doubles over again when a rose gets stuck at the back of his mouth. He can feel the little petals tickling the back of his throat, like he could reach in and pull it out, but he can’t; he knows he can’t, because he’s tried. Taako’s hands tremble around his temples.

His windpipe clears, bit by bit. When he can see straight he looks up to find Taako’s face creased in an expression he’s never seen. In his hands is a single rose; discolored, but stained scarlet with blood.

That anxious weight still holds in his sternum but Kravitz breathes slowly, shallowly, and it’s manageable again. Strangely enough, Taako’s face is mottled, and there — there’s a shine to his cheeks and around his eyes that Kravitz has never seen before. His fist is locked tight in the fabric of the couch by Kravitz’s waist.

He stares at the rose and Kravitz tries to ask what he’s thinking, and can’t form the words. At the pained sound, Taako’s face falls flat, and he crumples the rose in his fist.

“No!” Kravitz wheezes, lurching forward to weakly pry Taako’s hands off the bloom. “No, leave it!”

“Why?” Taako asks, hands shaking. “These — these fucking things, they’re killing you!”

“Don’t,” he pleads, “don’t, just — give it back to me, don’t hurt them, please — ”

“These — ” Taako locks his jaw, every point in his body rigid with tension. “These  _fucking_  flowers, Kravitz, why are you keeping — burn them!”

“No!” Kravitz reaches for it and collapses back with a choked groan as his ribs protest. “No— ”

“Okay, okay,” Taako says, resting a hand on Kravitz’s shoulder and gently pushing him back down. “All right, just…chill. Don’t sit up. Where — where d’you want it?”

Kravitz points behind him, toward the table where the most recent ones are stored, and Taako hisses at the sight of so many discolored blooms by his head. Taako drops it brusquely in with the others, then pauses and studies them for a long, long time. For the first time in a while, Kravitz has no idea what he’s thinking.

Then Taako takes him by surprise and turns and sits and says, “I wasn’t kidding.”

Kravitz looks questioningly at him. Taako clears his throat. “When I said — listen, Taako don’t make these sorts of confessions lightly, so there’s no — no ifs ands or buts, yeah? No passin’ Go, no — fuckin’ — putting anyone in jail or anything.”

Right. Kravitz relaxes back into the cushions, propping his head up on the arm to keep Taako the center of his vision. “I understand,” he says. “And — I meant it, too. When I thanked you.”

“No — ” Taako tugs out the hairband of his braid in one frustrated motion. “No, you thanked me because you thought I was goofing. I wasn’t goofing, this isn’t — this isn’t a goof. This is the last damn thing from a goof. Farthest damn thing.” He shakes his head, irritated. “That — okay, fuck speech, but listen. Point still stands. I wasn’t joking.”

Kravitz sighs. “Taako, I’m fine. Really. I’ve made my peace with it. You don’t have to — you don’t have to pretend anything just to keep me alive. I don’t want that for you.”

“Yeah, and I don’t — I don’t want death for  _you_ , homie!”

“I already told you, this isn’t your fault.” Kravitz reaches for Taako’s hand and he offers it, instantly. “This isn’t your responsibility.” A small, fond smile crosses his face. “I fell in love with you. It isn’t your fault that you don’t feel the same.”

But instead of calming down, Taako only appears more frantic. “This isn’t — I know, you don’t pick you fall in love with or whatever, okay so I see in retrospect how what I said doesn’t sound great, but I’m not just here to try to keep you alive! This isn’t some — some fucking scheme to, to make you hold on a little longer. I’m here to tell you I love you. Did — did you hear that? Because I’ll say it again, I fucking will. I love you. I love you, Kravitz.”

Kravitz stares at him. “What?”

“I love you, Kravitz.”

“No, I heard that part, I just don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get?” His voice is desperate in a way Kravitz has never heard it. “Three words, right? That’s — that’s — I mean, you do too, right?”

“Of course I love you,” Kravitz says easily. “But you — you understand why I don’t believe you, right? This is all awfully convenient.”

“Kravitz — ”

“No. I call Julia and Magnus, and you show up the next evening saying you love me? You’ve known me for ten years, Taako. Love doesn’t develop over the course of — of two days. It takes time.” He knows. He’s fallen in love before Taako, once or twice; but never for this long, and never this deeply.

When he was younger he wondered if he would die for it. He doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

But Taako doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop. Taako is the only person he knows who could rival Raven in stubbornness. “Yeah, that’s because I’m a fucking idiot. Look. You know me, Kravitz, you know that when I get an, uh, uh, a feeling that I don’t know what to do with I ignore it until it fucks off. You know that.”

Despite everything, the affirmation that Kravitz still knows him makes him feel warm. At least they still share something. “Yes,” Kravitz says dryly, “you do.”

“Yeah. So what do you think I did when I fell in love with you? D’you think I fuckin’ — that I recognized it and, like, acknowledged it like you did? Like any reasonable person would? Hell no, cha’boy went and stuck his head in the fucking sand and it took Barry and Lup two days to dig it out all the way! It — this didn’t just spring up — shit, bad choice in words, this — this didn’t just come out of nowhere, it’s — it’s been a long time, Kravitz. A really long time. I just — I didn’t know what to do with it. Didn’t even know it was happening until, y’know, last night when I was sitting — listening to — never mind, that’s not, that isn’t relevant. You don’t get to fuckin’ beef it because I’m an idiot.”

Kravitz shakes his head, and keeps shaking it. It doesn’t stack up. None of this makes sense: doesn’t add up, the words don’t flow. Three years he’s spent, feeling his own death creeping up on him, and Taako loved him the whole time?

Gods, he’d hoped. He’d hoped so badly, for so long. When he could still rasp through notes he’d written music, songs for Taako, what they could’ve shared. Then, when he realized his feelings would never be returned, he shoved them in a folder and locked them away.

He’d almost burned them. Ironically, it was Raven who had stopped him.

There’s a high-pitched whine filtering in through his ears and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s coming from him.

“Listen,” Taako says, faster and more frantic now. “I need you to believe me. Please, Kravitz. Please, you’re — you look like hell — ”

Kravitz keeps shaking his head. It’s spinning. The ground beneath his back is spinning. In his chest, those damned flowers keep blooming. “I don’t….”

“C’mon,” Taako pleads. His hands rhythmically smooth the collar of Kravitz’s shirt. Distantly Kravitz thinks that this is his sleepshirt, he should’ve put on something nicer for guests, before remembering that this is Taako and Taako has seen him in ripped black jeans and a T-shirt with Amy Lee’s face in the middle.

“Be — be angry, you can do that, that’s fine, as long as you accept — it took me like three years! It took me a long time, to get that, and isn’t that — oh boy isn’t that fucked! That it took me that long to realize!”

“Taako — ”

“No, you don’t — ” Taako’s breath hitches, the movement of his hands speeding. “Just — I can count on one fuckin’ hand the number of times I’ve seen you get angry but I need you to do it now, can you believe how long it took me? To realize I loved you? Just, I dunno, channel your sister, you were here suffering the whole time and I — ” his voice breaks and his shoulders hitch, “ — I didn’t realize ‘cause I didn’t want to see it, how fucked is that?”

“I…” Kravitz trails off. His throat is closing again. He can’t figure out what to think. Taako’s being sincere. Kravitz knows this because the tells are obvious, his face his voice and his ears, but the words he’s saying don’t make sense, because if he’s right then Kravitz was wrong for three years.

If he’s right —

Taako fumbles for Kravitz’s hand. He’s crying, Kravitz realizes through a pounding headache and ringing ears; he’s never seen Taako cry before. These last few days have held a lot of firsts for him.

Taako spreads his fingers gently and presses Kravitz’s hand to his chest. Right over his heartbeat.

It thumps, quick and harsh, against Kravitz’s palm. “I love you,” Taako whispers. “I do, I mean it, I really do. This isn’t a jape and it isn’t a goof, and that — this — this is going for you. This whole — heart thing, this rhythm — you’re a music boy, this tempo? It’s yours. It’s yours. Take it. If you want it, it’s kind of — fast, right now — ”

Taako’s words crumble, get stuck on the back of his tongue. “Please.”

“I don’t want to take your heart,” Kravitz manages. He can’t stop thinking: what if Taako isn’t lying?

“This isn’t taking, you’re not — you’re not  _taking_  it, I’m trying to give it! I’m trying to tell you that I’m giving it to you! No permission necessary, just — “ Taako releases Kravitz’s hand, and Kravitz keeps it there, carefully; his heartbeat is entrancing, just as it was the first time he felt it. He takes Kravitz’s face in his hands and presses their foreheads together. “I come here, and you tell me you’re a fucking day from dying, and I don’t — I can’t — Jesus, Kravitz, I need you to not be stubborn for once and just listen. Please, just listen.”

Kravitz stays silent. He thinks —

He’s never seen Taako like this before, so thoroughly taken apart. He’s never seen Taako touch someone other than his sister for longer than two minutes, and yet here he is, smoothing his hands along Kravitz’s shoulders, his arms, his cheeks; here he is, pressing their foreheads together and whispering impossible things against Kravitz’s lips like they mean something.

Taako folds him tighter in his arms. “I love you,” he whispers, palm flat against Kravitz’s shoulderblade. Stunned, it takes Kravitz several seconds to reciprocate, folding his hands behind the small of Taako’s back.

Over and over Taako repeats it:  _I love you, Kravitz. I love you. I miss you, I’m sorry I hurt you, please don’t leave; I love you. I love you. I love you._

Something curious happens, then.

Kravitz closes his eyes, chin tucked on Taako’s shoulder. He hears Taako’s litany, those string of broken words and hollow gasps; Taako’s never prayed in his life but this, Kravitz thinks, is the closest he’s ever gotten.

And Kravitz — lets him in. Lets himself hear those words, lets them wrap cool and gentle around his heart, and decides to trust.

_Please don’t hurt_ , Taako whispers, nails jagged against his shoulder, and suddenly, he doesn’t.

The wrenching pain in his chest ceases. The relief is so abrupt that Kravitz opens his eyes, just in time to blink as the aching pressure on the inside of his ribs vanishes. All down his throat, he can feel it; thousands of tiny roots that had burrowed into his flesh releasing, floating free.

And then they come up.

Kravitz locks his arms around Taako and coughs over his shoulder, pushes everything  _out_. Taako’s pleas turn frantic again but Kravitz tunes them out — he doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want to hear his love shouting himself hoarse — and holds him carefully, firmly in place. Taako fights him, looking again for some way to help but Kravitz doesn’t know how — doesn’t have the air to explain — that he doesn’t need it, that  _this is it_ , that it’s not just petals and it’s not just flowers but it’s roots and seeds and everything that has grown inside him for the past three years.

It burns like hell, and Kravitz loses himself to the familiar push-pull of expelling flowers while trying to suck in air. Eventually his arms weaken around Taako’s waist, trembling from exertion, and Taako’s hands are on him again in an instant. Somewhere, distantly, someone is crying his name, shaking his shoulders, begging him for — for something, but Kravitz can’t hear them.

Then the last of the petals fall free, and Kravitz sags forward. Two arms wrap around him, supporting him, and he looks up to see Taako crying openly, shaking with what must be fear.

He takes the first deep breath in three years.

“I’m okay,” he says. There’s still a rasp to his voice. The scores of flesh that ripped apart didn’t heal immediately, but the thorns wrapped in their stems are gone, a serene pile of green-and-red that lies innocently on their carpet.

“Kravitz?”

“I’m okay,” he says, giddy. “I’m — I can breathe!”

He takes a deep breath, then another, and another, marvelling at how he can feel his chest expand. There’s a sweetness to deep breaths that gods, he’d  _forgotten_  — he’d forgotten how good it felt to be able to close his eyes and breathe. His ribs twinge as lungs long-depressed expand again, and he revels in it.

“You — ” Taako presses his palms flat against Kravitz’s ribcage, and holds his breath for one, two, three seconds before his face crumples and he buries himself in Kravitz’s shoulder. He’s trembling. “Gods,” he whispers, “gods, Kravitz, you  _scared_  me, don’t fucking —  _Jesus_ — ”

He places a wondering hand on his throat and swallows. It doesn’t tickle. He doesn’t have to bury the urge to cough. He laughs, quietly, amazed. “I’m okay.”

“Is it gone?”

“It’s gone,” Kravitz says, still a little awed himself. Just like that. 

Taako’s hold on him tightens, like he’s trying to anchor Kravitz to him with sheer force of will, before he sits up. “You’re an idiot,” he says.

Kravitz laughs, and catches on the laugh when it doesn’t  _hurt_ , and laughs even harder, because now he can do that, now he can laugh at the stupid things Taako says. Gods, he can — he can finally sing again. “Fifty-fifty,” he says, rather generously, he thinks. The twinges of resentment he’s resoundingly pushed away for now protest the statement but then Taako does too, so Kravitz thinks he’s gotten his point across, whatever that point was.

Taako loves him.

He’d spent so long hoping and convincing himself that was impossible and here, here’s the proof that he was wrong, and he should be crying, probably, because he does that easy, but instead he just keeps smiling and can’t seem to stop. He laughs, still a little breathless, and draws Taako’s forehead to his. “I love you,” he says, because he can.

“Shit, dude,” Taako murmurs, voice still a little shaky, “me — me too, but listen, kemosabe, the next time you want validation just come talk to me, okay? I don’t…let’s not do that again.” He pauses, fervent. “Ever.”

“I knew what would happen when I told you,” Kravitz says quietly. “I wanted to keep you in my life for as long as possible, Taako. Maybe that was selfish of me.”

Little tremors run along Taako’s shoulders and Kravitz smooths his hands up Taako’s back, along the nape of his neck, humming a tuneless note as comfort. Taako’s not putting his apologies to words but Kravitz can hear them in the heaviness in the air. It’ll take him a long time, Kravitz thinks, to forgive himself for this.

He still knows Taako so well.

“It was,” Taako whispers, letting out a shaky laugh. “But so was leaving, so, uh…fifty-fifty. Except not really. More like…eighty-twenty. A hundred-zero? That’s not even a split, and I know that and I’m not even a math boy, so something’s wrong, uh, uh — “

“Let’s think about that in the morning, hmm?” Kravitz murmurs, catching Taako’s cheekbones with his thumbs and pulling back just far enough to look Taako in the eye.

Taako pulls away and slumps on top of Kravitz, kicking his feet on top of the cushions. He twists to rest an ear on Kravitz’s chest and it takes him a moment; the same heartbeat that pulses in his throat, Taako hears now. Almost instinctively he curls a hand round to the small of Taako’s back, and rests the other against his chest.

“Can I — ” Taako swallows. Kravitz turns his head, nose brushing along Taako’s hair. “Can I stay?”

The vulnerability in those words makes his chest tighten. He drops a kiss on Taako’s forehead then snuggles down, comfortable and warm beneath Taako’s weight.

“Of course.”

* * *

He wakes, and notices two things simultaneously: first, he can breathe without wincing, and second, someone’s holding his hand.

He must make some noise because Taako, sitting by the couch with his head tipped back against the curve of Kravitz’s waist, turns to look at him. When he sees Kravitz, his face splits into a grin. “Morning.”

“Morning.” It wasn’t a dream, then, falling asleep with Taako in his arms. He can’t help but smile in return.

“How did you sleep?”

“Good,” he says, surprised at the truth in the statement. He’d slept the whole night through, strangely comfortable despite the fact that this wasn’t his bed, despite the rattling of the radiator that kept him up as a child. He remembers Taako sprawled snugly against his side, and chuckles at a mystery solved. “You?”

“Good.” There’s light streaming in from the windows already, and it catches Taako’s white shirt and hair in streaks of gold as he raises his second hand to join the first. “I woke up a bit before you did, to be honest, but, uh…” he shrugs. “Didn’t want to do anything before you opened those tired eyes.”

The consideration makes Kravitz feel light. He snags one of Taako’s hands and presses the back to his lips, gently. His lips catch briefly on smooth skin. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Taako stares at him, wide-eyed, then clunks his face against Kravitz’s hip with a snort. “Sap. You’re still a fuckin’ — did you pick that up in your Victorian novels, Kravitz? Is that where you learned that — that fuckin’ trick?”

“It was my homosexual Westerns, actually.”

“Fuck off with that.”

“No, really! You’d be surprised how chivalrous cowboys can be.”

Taako studies his innocent expression, then jabs a finger in his nose. “Still can’t fool me with that poker face, thug.”

“Damn.” Despite the loss, he’s grinning so wide his jaw aches. “At least I can still hand your ass to you in Go Fish.”

“Go Fish is pure luck, that’s a loada bullshit,” Taako says.

He laughs, and Taako does too, and his gaze drops to Taako’s lips and he wonders —

Taako reaches out a hand, brushes a gentle thumb along Kravitz’s lips, palm perched lightly on his chin. “Chapped boys,” he murmurs, drawing a soft laugh from Kravitz. “All this time I thought you just had shitty chapstick, my man.”

“Nope, that was the — the ‘pneumonia.’” He draws verbal air quotes around the word, unwilling to move a muscle.

Taako’s fingers are soft against his lips. Everywhere skin meets skin trails a pathway of sparks that make Kravitz shiver. Kravitz watches him closely, catches the slight hitch in Taako’s breath, how his gaze follows the path his thumb traces gently; watches him lean in, slightly, and close his eyes.

This time it’s Kravitz’s turn to catch his breath. Taako’s brows are knit in anticipation and it would be rude, he thinks, giddy, to make him wait.

Taako’s lips are just as soft as his fingers. He makes a small noise when their mouths meet and reaches forward, running his hand along Kravitz’s cheeks and into his hair.

Kravitz lets them fall backward, tugging Taako along with him. Taako fits easily against his hip, the curve of his chest. Kravitz delights in running a hand along the planes of his back, the curve of his spine, up to cup his neck where the gentle touch makes Taako shudder in his arms. It’s everything he’d hoped for, and he lets out a fluttering sigh when they break apart.

“Hachi machi,” Taako says, breathless. Then he grins. “Man, I was missing out.”

“So was I,” Kravitz says. He pulls Taako more securely against him, the solid weight comforting against his chest, and has to fight back another yawn. He could go back to sleep like this, easily, the two of them twined close together.

Taako laughs softly against the corner of his jaw. “Lazy,” he murmurs.

“Fuck off,” Kravitz replies, just as soft. “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.”

There’s a beat of silence, and Kravitz worries for a moment he’s said something wrong, but then one of Taako’s hands tucks more securely around his back and he says, “Yeah. I — I’m glad we can do this, Kravitz. I — ” Taako swallows, burying his nose in Kravitz’s collarbone, and then, so quietly Kravitz can hardly hear it. “I love you.”

Kravitz presses a kiss to Taako’s forehead, notices the contented tilt of Taako’s ears, the way his hands nestle perfectly in the small of Taako’s back; he thinks of the days and weeks before him and thinks, maybe, that his apartment is big enough for two. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there it is! 
> 
> A couple notes about after this (read: things I wanted to write but never got around to): things go really well. They move in together, though Taako does ask Raven before asking Kravitz, since Raven is moving in with Istus and that would leave Krav to find a place on his own. For a little while, things are awkward while Taako tries to make up for leaving, until one day Kravitz calls him out on it and just asks him to stop. They have a heart-to-heart about Kravitz being a romantic and Taako being a bit of an asshole, and eventually, both of their fears (Taako, that Kravitz will realize he's a dick and leave; Kravitz, that Taako will...leave, again) are put to rest.
> 
> Hanahaki never shows up again. This is the classic fairy tale ending: they live happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> liked what you read? catch me on tumblr at believingbrook!
> 
> also, please check out [this incredible art](http://ungarmax.tumblr.com/post/178364617006) by @ungarmax on tumblr!


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